(Esquire)
Brad Pitt has slammed his marriage to Jennifer Aniston, saying he was burnt out and had “an epiphany” to change his life during their time together.
The “World War Z” star, 49, says that 10 years ago he was afraid his drug use had ruined him. He tells the June/July issue of Esquire magazine, “For a long time I thought I did too much damage — drug damage. 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 [bleep]ing off,” Pitt admitted. “But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity.” Then, “about a decade ago,” when he was still married to Aniston, he says he made a “conscious change” in his life.
“It was an epiphany — a decision not to squander my opportunities,” he explained. “It was a feeling of, ‘Get up.’ Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
Pitt, who has previously admitted he almost turned into a “doughnut” from smoking too much marijuana in the late 1990s, met Aniston in 1998, and they married in July 2000.
He told Parade in 2011, “I started to get sick of myself sitting on a couch, holding a joint, hiding out. It started feeling pathetic . . . I think my marriage [to Aniston] had something to do with it; trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t.”
His world changed in 2005, when he starred with Angelina Jolie in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” He divorced Aniston and began a relationship with Jolie. Eight years later, they have six kids.
He told Esquire of his life now, “I have a handful of close friends and I have my family, and I haven’t known life to be any happier.
“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 . . . I love it. I hate it when they’re gone.”
Pitt opened up to the mag on April 1, before Jolie revealed she’d undergone a double mastectomy.