Brad Pitt on the cover of Esquire (Esquire)
Brad Pitt opens up about his life as a devoted family man in the actor’s first print interview since his wife Angelina Jolie bravely announced she underwent a double mastectomy to save herself from the risk of breast cancer.
While the 49-year-old doesn’t talk about the surgery – the procedure was still a secret when he was being interviewed – he does talk about how he’s happier than ever, despite the bumps in the road.
“I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven’t known life to be any happier,” the father of six told Esquire in their cover interview.
“I always thought if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house. There’s constant chatter in our house, whether it’s giggling, screaming, crying or banging.”
He added, “I love it. I hate it when they’re gone. Maybe it’s nice to be in a hotel room for a day – ‘Oh, nice, I can finally read a paper’. But then, by the next day, I miss that cacophony, all that life.”
The “World War Z” star also shared with the men’s magazine that he’s had a history with drugs, but he decided to move on.
“For a long time I thought I did too much damage – drug damage,” he said. “I was a bit of a drifter. A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I spent years [bleeping] off.
“But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change. This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany – a decision not to squander my opportunities. It was a feeling of get up. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
Pitt opened up to the men’s mag on April 1, roughly one month into Jolie’s series of surgeries to remove breast tissue. Jolie was diagnosed with the BRCA 1 gene and was given an 87% chance of developing breast cancer before undergoing a double mastectomy.
The June/July issue of Esquire hits newsstands May 31.