Brad Pitt reveals he’s ENDED seven-year sobriety as actor opens up on harrowing suicide thoughts
Brad Pitt has disclosed he is no longer sober, having resumed drinking after seven years without alcohol.
In an interview with Esquire published on Monday, the 62-year-old actor acknowledged he had fallen off the wagon but stressed he was approaching alcohol with far greater caution than before.
“I was sober for seven years,” he told the magazine. “And then I got back off the wagon.”
The beloved movie star said he had learned to recognise his boundaries, admitting he became overconfident on a couple of occasions and quickly realised it was a mistake.
Brad Pitt has opened up about his personal life in a candid new interview
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“In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple of times, went, ‘Yep, nope, not good for me’,” he said. “Not in big quantities.”
Mr Pitt explained that while he permits himself a few glasses of wine, excess is off limits. “I have to be professional about it,” he added.
The Esquire interview also saw Mr Pitt make an admission about his mental health, revealing he had contemplated suicide during what he described as an acutely distressing chapter of his life.
“In that one little period, I just thought … I just couldn’t, just didn’t see a way out,” he said.
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Mr Pitt in September 2016
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“The pain was so oppressive that … I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief.”
The Oscar-winning actor said the experience gave him a profound understanding of why people take their own lives.
“Oh, OK, now I understand. I understand suicide in the sense that it’s just relief. It’s just looking for relief from the pain,” he reflected.
However, Mr Pitt said his innate will to survive quickly took hold.
The actor is currently in a relationship with jewellery executive Ines de Ramon
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“I also think we have incredible survival instincts, and for me, that immediately kicked in,” he told the magazine.
When the interviewer probed whether difficulties with his children had contributed to these dark feelings, Mr Pitt confirmed the source of his anguish without going into detail.
“Family stuff. We could leave it at that,” he responded.
The actor made clear there had been no simple route to recovery from that emotional low point.
He described the process not as climbing out but as enduring it, trying repeatedly to the point of exhaustion, then trying once more.
“I don’t want to ignore the place where you run up against the wall,” he said.
“But I just one day woke up, and it just felt a little sunnier, and the air felt a little sweeter. Just microdoses of it.”
Mr Pitt also acknowledged the sheer difficulty of his circumstances, saying simply: “This s*** ain’t easy.”
Brad Pitt began his acting career in the late 1980s before becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest stars
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Despite everything, he said he otherwise feels as though he has “won the lottery” in life.
Mr Pitt’s relationship with his six children, Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 18-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, is understood to have broken down in the years since his separation from Angelina Jolie.
Four of the children have taken steps through legal filings to remove “Pitt” from their surnames.
Ms Jolie initiated divorce proceedings in September 2016 following an incident on a private aircraft involving Mr Pitt and the family.
Mr Pitt starred as veteran racing driver Sonny Hayes in the blockbuster F1
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Court documents later made public alleged Mr Pitt, who was intoxicated at the time, had been verbally and physically aggressive towards Ms Jolie and at least one of their children.
The pair were declared legally single in April 2019, though their divorce was not formally concluded until December 2024 after years of legal wrangling.
A separate civil dispute over their jointly owned French vineyard remains unresolved.
Mr Pitt first spoke publicly about seeking help for his drinking in 2019, when he revealed he had begun attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in 2016, the same year his marriage to Ms Jolie collapsed.
Brad Pitt shares six children with his former wife Angelina Jolie
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The actor previously credited fellow Hollywood star Bradley Cooper with supporting him through that period, and said he spent more than a year attending AA sessions.
Speaking to The New York Times that year, Mr Pitt conceded he had pushed his alcohol consumption to its absolute limit.
“I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privilege,” he said at the time.
His decision to get sober came in the immediate aftermath of the aeroplane incident that precipitated Jolie’s divorce filing.
Mr Pitt has since returned to the screen in several high-profile projects, with his next role in the David Ayer-directed Heart of the Beast.
Anyone who is in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide can call the Samaritans anonymously for free from a UK phone on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org.
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