Word: pitt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...epic that's gorgeous to look at and gives some much-needed high-profile visibility to the tragic modern history of Tibet--but opts for glossy formulaic packaging over genuine emotional resonance. Each turn of the plot feels Hollywood-scripted to the max, even the central relationship between Brad Pitt's Austrian mountaineer and the young Dalai Lama. The latter succeeds in blending wide-eyed winsomeness with a dignity that's at once childlike and mature. Pitt, alas, never frees us from the sensation that he's something incongruous in this setting--a Hollywood heartthrob trying to look spiritual...
Tibet, as viewers of awards shows well know, has been the subject of some interest in the celebrity community, but Pitt says he received no phone calls from colleagues like Gere or Steven Seagal--recently revealed to be the reincarnation of a particularly revered lama--worrying about how his film would portray key moments in the Dalai Lama's life. Pitt himself is not a particularly spiritual person. "I've always paid attention to religion," he says, "because I grew up in a religious background, but I've never felt a part of any of them. I think there...
Before Seven Years in Tibet, Pitt didn't know much about the country's predominant religion. He picked up a copy of Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, an introduction to the subject, but never cracked it, preferring in the end to enter the project as ignorant as was the character he plays, Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer, when he stumbled across the Tibetan border in 1944. But on a movie set stocked with actual monks working as extras, the actor picked up a thing or two. "Their idea of a civilization that rejects violence...
...Pitt brushes off the controversy about Harrer's recently discovered SS past and the resulting news stories that suggested Pitt and director Jean-Jacques Annaud were making some kind of glam hero out of a Nazi scuzzbag. "That's a slant people took before they knew all the information," Pitt complains. "You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a f______ actor! They hand me a script...
That stark reality didn't protect him from overeager Argentine admirers while shooting Seven Years in Tibet on location in the Andes, which doubled for the Himalayas. By one account, Pitt's living quarters were ringed by young girls chanting, "Ole! Ole, ole, ole! Brad Peeeeet!" "Yeah, yeah, there was that stuff," he says, embarrassed. "Argentina is a place where not many movies come through, so I could have been New Kids on the Block for all they cared. And that stuff never did much for my ego. I mean, when we were kids, my sister had Andy Gibb...