About a week after Angelina Jolie alleged that Brad Pitt physically assaulted her and their shared kids on a private plane in 2016, Pitt acknowledged “failures in my relationships, where have I misstepped” in a Wednesday interview with the Financial Times.
Pitt, who’s currently promoting a series of his sculptures on display at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Finland, told the newspaper he started sculpting in 2016, around the time that Jolie filed for divorce after the alleged plane incident. He said he started collaborating with his long-time friend, British artist Thomas Houseago, at the latter’s Los Angeles studio, and they bonded over their “mutual misery.”
“Out of this misery came a flame of joy in my life,” Pitt said, explaining that he’d “always wanted to be a sculptor.”
While telling the Times about his artistic process, Pitt seemed to acknowledge Jolie’s allegations of mistreatment and abuse: “It’s all about self-reflection,” he said. “I was looking at my own life and really concentrating on owning my own shit: where was I complicit in failures in my relationships, where have I misstepped.” Pitt explained that his art “was born out of ownership of what I call a radical inventory of self, getting really brutally honest with me, and taking account of those I may have hurt.”
https://twitter.com/SaraHildenArt/status/1571136954380750856/
Of course, despite talking about accountability and owning up to mistakes, “sources” speaking for Pitt have been pretty dismissive of Jolie’s allegations, writing them off as an attention stunt and accusing her of brainwashing their kids and “poisoning” them against Pitt.
Last week, amid Pitt’s ongoing lawsuit against Jolie for intentionally “[seeking] to inflict harm” by selling her stakes in their shared winery to a Russian “stranger” earlier this year, a cross-complaint filed by Jolie offered chilling new details about Pitt’s allegedly abusive behavior toward her and their shared kids. The filings, which follow an FBI report about the private plane incident from 2016 that became public in August, allege that on a drunken tirade, Pitt “grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall.” When their kids tried to defend Jolie, Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face,” per Jolie’s suit.
The court documents claim that the FBI agent working on the family’s case told Jolie in October 2021 that they’d “concluded that the government had probable cause to charge Pitt with a federal crime for his conduct that day.” At the same time, the exes’ negotiations around their shared winery fell through because Pitt allegedly demanded that Jolie sign an NDA about their marriage.
Since Jolie’s counter suit last week, she’s faced a barrage of online attacks reminiscent of harassment against Amber Heard. While netizens and media outlets accuse Jolie of a malicious smear campaign against Pitt, he’s clearly found peace in the fallout of a relationship through making art—notably the redemption hobby of choice for men like former President George W. Bush and Johnny Depp, too.
Nine of Pitt’s sculptures are currently on display, including one featuring a gun fight between eight figures, curiously titled, “Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time,” which surely took considerable self-reflection! On top of his little art side hustle, Pitt is keeping busy, shilling “gender-neutral” skin care and allegedly dating the new divorcée Emily Ratajkowski. Something tells me his life hasn’t been ruined just yet.