The PC police are out to “cancel” any celebrity or historical figure they dub “offensive” these days. No matter left or right, these social justice warriors want blood over even the slightest infraction. Now, popular Hollywood star Brad Pitt could just find himself in cancel culture’s crosshairs after revealing that his favorite film role was none other than the Southern-sympathizing outlaw, Jesse James!
Brad Pitt Talks About Some Of His Favorite Roles
Pitt has been open in recent months about what his favorite roles have been, and one of his top picks was his breakthrough part in Ridley Scott’s 1991 classic Thelma And Louise. Though he enjoyed his time working on this film, he found himself typecast in that same type of “hunky hitchhiker” role afterwards.
“I was offered hitchhiker roles, which is no surprise,” Pitt told The New York Times in December. “I was also being offered romantic leads. For me in the ’90s, there was this strict imprint of what a leading man was.”
Wanting to break through his typecasting, Pitt took the role of a psychotic murderer in the 1993 thriller Kalifornia, which is another film he looks back on fondly.
“It’s kind of a B film, but it was important for me,” Pitt explained of the movie. “I was going against the things I was getting at the time. I got to do character work in it, and there’s humor laid in there, too. … What I’m pinpointing with Kalifornia is a moment in which you can tell yourself that the box is bigger than the one you’re being defined in.”
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Brad Pitt Reveals His Favorite Role Was Jesse James
However, neither of these film roles was Pitt’s favorite.
That honor goes to his role as Jessie James, a southern sympathizer during the Civil War, in the 2007 movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
“I called Andrew and said, ‘Hey, if you’ve got anything that I fit, I’ll do it.’ And he said, ‘I do.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I’m in,’” Pitt recalled, referring to the film’s director Andrew Dominik, according to Collider. “And we ended up producing that. That was near and dear to me, as well as the 10 other people who’ve seen it.”
These days, anything that is remotely pro-south is a “cancellable” offense.
So, it’s risky to speak fondly about portraying someone who was raised in “Little Dixie” and sympathized with the Confederacy. Not to mention the fact Jesse James was a notorious outlaw who allegedly committed horrible atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists
This doesn’t matter at all to Pitt, however, as his work on the film represents a conscious shift that he made in his career to taking on more high-quality roles.
Brad Pitt said:
“To me, it’s a statement on celebrity and wanting to make a name for yourself without any substance under that. It’s a beautiful film. It really is.”
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The Assassination of Jesse James Was A Box Office Flop
Not only does Pitt not care that he could be cancelled for saying this, it also doesn’t matter to him that the movie itself ended up being a flop.
“I can turn out the hits over and over and I just—my favorite movie is the worst-performing film of anything I’ve done, The Assassination of Jesse James,” Pitt told GQ in 2017. “If I believe something is worthy, then I know it will be worthy in time to come.”
Once again, Pitt is showing the world that he is a true class act! We could certainly use more stars in Hollywood like him.
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