Brad Pitt says grief “leaves a gaping hole” as he reflects on his children and family

Highlights

• Brad Pitt says the most painful period of his life was connected to “family stuff”.
• The actor says he sometimes thinks about his children when he sees happy families.
• Pitt reflects on his mother’s death and his father’s grief.
• He says he is learning to accept what he cannot control and appreciate the people still in his life.

Pitt keeps his family pain private

Brad Pitt has given a rare glimpse into the family pain behind some of the most difficult years of his life, but remains careful about what he is willing to reveal.

In a candid interview with Esquire, the 62-year-old actor reflects on his children, his parents, grief and the losses that have shaped his outlook. The conversation comes amid renewed attention on his personal life following his admission that he has returned to drinking after seven years of sobriety.

But when asked about a period in which his emotional pain became so overwhelming that he could understand why someone might see suicide as relief, Pitt points to something else.

He tells the interviewer it was “family stuff” when asked whether he was referring to his children.

When the interviewer repeats the phrase, Pitt responds: “We could leave it at that.”

Pitt does not identify which family circumstances he means. The Esquire profile references his long-running divorce from Angelina Jolie and the reported estrangement between Pitt and some of his children, but he does not directly attribute his darkest period to his children or his former marriage.

Pitt says he thinks about his children

The actor offers another glimpse into his family life when discussing the way he reacts to seeing other families.

Pitt says he sometimes drives past people sitting in cafés, eating and laughing together, and feels something like envy at how happy and carefree they appear.

The interviewer suggests he may think about his children in those moments. Pitt also thinks about his father, imagining him alone in the darkened rooms of the family home.

That sense of loss has changed how Pitt interprets Stephen Stills' Love the One You're With. He says he once disliked the song because he saw it as being about settling for something other than what you really wanted.

Now, he views it as being about appreciating what remains.

He talks about “the friends who hung in with you, the family who understand you, the people who are still here”, describing the shift as a way of focusing on the positive.

His mother's death has brought him closer to his father

Pitt also discusses the death of his mother last year and the effect it has had on his father.

He says his father is dealing with the loss and that, in his words, “it’s better to be the one who goes first.”

Pitt says the two now speak regularly and that he was planning to visit his father in Missouri. They would sit on the porch in the evenings, watching lightning bugs and listening to cicadas while talking about the woman who is no longer there.

The actor says his family does not tend to discuss grief in depth.

“We don’t go in depth,” he says, explaining that occasionally one line will cut to the core before they move on.

The conversation leads Pitt to reflect more broadly on loss. He describes grief as “the most levelling of all emotions”, adding that loss is the most profound thing a person can endure and that the loneliness which follows can be its greatest burden.

Pitt is learning to let go

Pitt says he has also spent time reconsidering the way he experiences his emotions.

He tells the interviewer that he had recently described himself to a friend as sometimes being too emotional and tightly wound, capable of becoming extremely angry or extremely ecstatic.

His friend suggested that rather than trying to become more even, he should accept the full range of human experience.

Pitt says that idea freed him from believing there was something wrong with feeling things so intensely.

He also rejects the idea that people simply need to “climb out” of periods of profound pain.

“I don’t see it as climbing out of it,” Pitt says. “It’s going through it.”

He describes continuing to try until, eventually, small changes begin to appear. He recalls waking up one day and feeling that life was slightly different, with “the air felt a little sweeter.”

For Pitt, that process ultimately comes down to acceptance.

He says people may need to let go of “that need, that belief about the way things should be or what should have been or how things are supposed to be”, rather than trying to force life into a shape they can control.

After years in which his family life has remained under intense public scrutiny, Pitt's comments offer only a limited window into what happened behind closed doors. But his decision to call the pain simply “family stuff”, while speaking openly about his children, his parents and the people who remain in his life, suggests he is more interested in accepting what cannot be changed than revisiting the details publicly.