Brad Pitt Reveals Why He Didn’t Cry For 20 Years

Brad Pitt went about 20 years without crying, until now. The actor gave a wide-ranging interview this week where he talked about his troubled past, including his history of alcohol abuse, which he feels stunted his emotional expression. Now, he is finally opening up.

Pitt sat down with Anthony Hopkins for a discussion in Interview Magazine, which was published on Monday. The actor talked about how he is getting more outwardly emotional as he grows older, and he is coming to terms with that.

“I am quite famously a not-crier” he said. “Is that a term? Now I find myself, at this latter stage, much more moved — moved by my kids, moved by friends, moved by the news. Just moved. I think it’s a good sign. I don’t know where it’s going, but I think it’s a good sign.”
Hopkins, 81, agreed that age can help loosen up stuck emotions.

“The thing about me is, I cry at the drop of a hat, because everything moves me, because I’m getting old,” he said. “Inside, we get the wallpaper stripped off all of our defenses, bit by bit, clawed away. You’ll find, as you get older, that you just want to weep.”

“Yes. It’s not even about grief. It’s about the glory of life,” he added.

Pitt, 55, is just starting to catch on to this new phenomena. He also reflected on how Hopkins encouraged him to get sober in 1998, when they filmed Meet Joe Black together.

“I look at it, and I think, ‘What a great blessing that was, because it was painful,’” Hopkins said. “I did some bad things. But it was all for a reason, in a way. And it’s strange to look back and think, ‘God, I did all those things?’ But it’s like there’s an inner voice that says, ‘It’s over. Done. Move on.’”

“Well, I just saw it as a disservice to myself, as an escape,” Pitt said of drinking.

“I’m realizing, as a real act of forgiveness for myself for all the choices that I’ve made that I’m not proud of, that I value those missteps,” he continued, “because they led to some wisdom, which led to something else. You can’t have one without the other. I see it as something I’m just now getting my arms around at this time in my life. But I certainly don’t feel like I can take credit for any of it.”

Pitt revealed that he had quit drinking earlier this year in an interview with the New York Times. The actor even revealed that he had attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, saying that they had done wonders for his health and his creative catharsis.