(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 19 November 2025 19:15, UK
It’s not unusual for an actor to get cold feet when the start of production is looming, even though they should have had a pretty good idea of what they were getting into when they inked the contract. Still, Brad Pitt was so desperate to weasel his way out of a movie that he tried to buy his way to freedom.
He’s a very, very rich man, but even he didn’t have the required sum lying around, which is why everyone, regardless of their profession, should always check the small print before they put their signature on everything. Either that, or don’t agree to do something that you might end up regretting.
These days, Pitt is regarded as one of the savviest operators in the business. He’s been an A-list star for the last three decades, he’s won Academy Awards as an actor and producer, and when he’s not in front of the cameras, he can usually be found behind them, lending his knowledge and experience to a wealth of diverse projects, like Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk, Vice, Minari, Blonde, and Mickey 17.
He wasn’t in the same position in the mid-1990s, despite being pegged for the very top. After a string of unfulfilling roles that needed little else than for him to stand around looking ridiculously handsome, 1993 was a breakout year for Pitt, who showed two wildly disparate sides of himself in True Romance and Kalifornia, underlining that he was more than just a pretty face.
For his next step, he boarded the biggest film of his career to date, and shared the screen with one of cinema’s biggest stars. As expected, the central pairing of Pitt and Tom Cruise propelled Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire to box office success, but actually making the literary fantasy adaptation won’t go down as one of the former’s most memorable experiences.
In short, he hated it. There was immediate buyer’s remorse, with Pitt left thoroughly miserable, his words, by spending “six months in the fucking dark.” He was far from a happy camper, and things reached boiling point when he felt like he had no other choice but to politely ask if there was any chance he could be freed from his predicament.
Helpfully, he had friends in high places. Or, to be more accurate, one friend in a very high place. Pitt was relatively close with David Geffen, the industry mogul who also happened to be the founder and owner of The Geffen Film Company, the production outfit who were footing the bill for Interview with the Vampire.
“I’m telling you, one day it broke me,” he confessed, so he called Geffen to ask for a favour. He wanted to know how much it would cost him to break the terms of his contract and secure a quick escape, only to change his mind when he was informed that it would set him back the not inconsiderable sum of $40 million.
Since he didn’t have that kind of cash lying around, although he definitely does now, Pitt was out of options: “I was like, ‘I’ve got to man up and ride through this.’” He did man up, he did ride through it, and he saved himself tens of millions in the process.
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