What To Know
- Brad Pitt admitted that he felt suicidal due to “family stuff” at one point in his life.
- The actor is seemingly estranged from his six children following his divorce from Angelina Jolie.
- Four of the kids have taken legal action to remove Pitt from their last names.
Brad Pitt made a rare comment about the drama in his personal life after four of his six children filed legal documents to drop “Pitt” from their last names, following years of publicized separation from the actor. The actor has had a complicated relationship with his kids since splitting from their mom, Angelina Jolie, in 2016.
While Pitt didn’t dive into the specifics of what’s going on in his family, he did admit to feeling “suicidal” at “one little period” in his life due to “family stuff.”
“In that one little period, I just thought … I just couldn’t, just didn’t see a way out,” Pitt told Esquire. “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. And I thought, ‘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. But I also think we have incredible survival instincts, and for me, that immediately kicked in.”
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When the interviewer asked Pitt if “kid stuff” contributed to these intense feelings, he noted, “Family stuff. We could leave it at that.”
Pitt said there was no “climbing out of” this situation, but explained, “It’s going through it and trying and trying and trying to the point of exhaustion and then trying again. I don’t want to ignore the place where you run up against the wall. 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.”
Jolie reportedly filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 after a private plane ride with Pitt and their children. Subsequently released court documents claimed Pitt, who was inebriated at the time, was verbally and physically violent with Jolie and at least one of the children. Their divorce was finalized in 2024; however, the two have continued to entangled in a civil lawsuit over the ownership of their once-shared French winery.
Elsewhere in the interview, the actor opened up about his sobriety status. “I was sober for seven years, and then I got back off the wagon,” he admitted. “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times [and] went, ‘Yep, nope, not good for me.’ Not in big quantities.” He clarified that he can “have a few” glasses of wine, “but I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or dial 988. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
If you or someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know has addiction issues, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration‘s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
