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In a rare mention of his personal life, Brad Pitt says in a new interview that he has never been suicidal “except for one little period” that was related to “family stuff.”
The 62-year-old Hollywood icon made a short reference to his family situation in an interview with Esquire published on Aug. 10 in which he talked about “oppressive” pain that led him to a dark place where he could “understand suicide.”
In the Esquire interview, Pitt initially shared his thoughts about going to dark places in life, unconnected to any question about his family.
“I was never suicidal in any way,” he said. “It just was not my makeup. In fact, if I have any afflictions, it’s probably being a congenital optimist,” he said.
He reiterated he’s “never been suicidal,” before adding, “except for one little period.”
“And in that one little period, I just thought — I just couldn’t — just didn’t see a way out,” he said. “The pain was so oppressive that — I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel — I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief. And I thought, Oh, okay, now I understand — I understand suicide, in the sense that it’s just relief. It’s just looking for relief from the pain. But I also think we have incredible survival instincts. And for me, that immediately kicked in, but it was just …”
Pitt was asked what could have provoked him to think about suicide in that way. The reporter questioned if it was “kid stuff,” per the Esquire article.
“Family stuff,” Pitt said. “We could leave it at that.”
Pitt and his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, have six children. The couple reached a divorce settlement in 2024 after Jolie accused Pitt of verbal and physical abuse, which he has denied. Their daughter Shiloh, 20, legally dropped “Pitt” from her last name when she turned 18 in 2024. Two of his other children have also considered ditching “Pitt” from their last name, according to a court filing in California cited by CNN in July 2026.
The “F1” star was later asked how he endured the difficult period he referenced.
“I don’t see it as climbing out of it,” he said. “It’s going through it and trying and trying and trying and trying to the point of exhaustion and then trying again. I don’t want to ignore the place where you run up against the wall. But I just one day woke up, and it just felt a little sunnier and the air felt a little sweeter. Just microdoses of it.”
Pitt does not make it clear in the interview what “little period” he is referring to in his life. Elsewhere in the interview, he discussed the death of his mother in August 2025 and said, referencing his father, “Let’s just say it’s better to be the one who goes first.”
Once Hollywood’s most famous couple, Pitt, and Jolie, 51, met on the set of the 2005 movie “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and got married in 2014. Jolie filed for divorce in 2016.
In 2022, amid already contentious divorce proceedings, Jolie accused Pitt of physical and verbal abuse on a 2016 flight from France to Los Angeles, during which he allegedly choked one of their children, which prompted her to file for divorce, according to a court filing from Jolie.