Courtney Love claims Brad Pitt got her fired from Fight Club after learning that she would not let him play Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain, in a movie. When the 1999 cult classic was in production, Love was in a relationship with star Edward Norton and was considered for the role of his on-screen love interest. The part eventually went to Helena Bonham Carter.
During a stop on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Love said Pitt convinced director David Fincher to fire her because she rejected Pitt’s pitch for a Cobain biopic. Pitt approached Love with the idea during a meeting between them and Good Will Hunting director Guz Van Sant about making a film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain years before Ang Lee would. Love was married to Cobain from 1992 until his death two years later by suicide.
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“I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt. I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the f— do you think are?” Love told Maron in the Dec. 27 episode of the comedian’s podcast, via Indiewire.
After Love rejected Pitt’s pitch, Love claims she was fired from Fight Club and it was Norton who had to tell her. “He starts sobbing,” Love said. “And he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’” Fincher allegedly called Love to tell her she was not in the movie.
The former Hole singer said Pitt still pitches ideas for a movie about her late husband. She claimed his production company Plan B pitched her the idea s recently as 2020. Love claims Almost Famous director Cameron Crowe even told her once that Pitt was “put on this earth to stalk you” for Cobain.
“I don’t know if I trust you and I don’t know that your movies are for profit,” Love told Maron. “They’re really good social justice movies, but if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”
A source later told Variety that Love auditioned for Fight Club, but disputed the idea that she was offered the part. You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get,” the source said. “It’s common knowledge that roles are not decided by other actors but by the director.”
Although Love, 58, is best known for his music career, she has starred in several films. If she made Fight Club, it could have been the follow-up to her acclaimed performance in Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt. She also starred in Sid and Nancy, Man on the Moon, and the Lifetime movie Menendez: Blood Brothers. She had recurring roles in Sons of Anarchy and Empire.
