Tyler Durden, David Mills, Lt. Aldo Raine: Brad Pitt has no shortage of iconic performances. However, it’s his turn in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that’s won him his first-ever Oscar.
Quentin Tarantino’s penultimate movie – a brimming love letter to Hollywood’s Golden Age – saw Pitt take on the character of Cliff Booth: a hunky stunt double with a cracking dog (and the odd skeleton in his closet), loyal to his movie partner Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio).
The 56-year-old’s first ever Academy Award win was heavily tipped, particularly after a near-flawless awards season sweep, taking home the BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG Award on top of the Oscar.
That’s not to say the competition wasn’t similarly incredible – Pitt triumphed over some class acts, such as Tom Hanks for his performance as Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood and Anthony Hopkins’ turn as one of The Two Popes.
Before awards ceremonies got into full swing, Pitt’s biggest competition were Joe Pesci and Al Pacino for their respective performances in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, with many suspecting Pesci would emerge victorious.
On working with the actor on OUATIH, stunt coordinator Zoe Bell told Hollywood Life that Pitt is ‘hilarious’ and has a ‘healthy cynicism about what it is to be human’.
Bell added:
It was amazing. I really enjoyed my time with him. Out of the whole cast he was the one that we worked most closely with. And [his story] was most important to me, having been a stunt double for so long.
It was like, the authenticity of him and how that story was told and the relationship was. I mean, I only had so much to do with it, but it was an important piece to me and I was stoked to be a part of it. And he was just so willing and open, and he had no bravado about it. He certainly had no like: ‘I have to do all my own stunts.’
I mean, he ended up doing that fight. It was him and Mike doing the fight the whole time. So he was willing to get to the place where he was comfortable. But he had no ego about having to do it all himself, which I just thought was like, awesome. And, you know, sort of new-age and real in a way that’s just very humble.
Pitt also turned in another fantastic performance last year, starring in James Gray’s existential space epic Ad Astra.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.