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Acclaimed director Edward Zwick has accused Brad Pitt of being “volatile” during their filming of the 1994 movie Legends of the Fall.
In an excerpt from his new memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, Ed (71) says he had several “ugly dust-ups” with the heartthrob actor, who was 34 at the time.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who is now retired, says they “yelled, swore and threw chairs at each other.”
“It was the first augury of the deeper springs of emotion roiling inside Brad," Ed writes.
He recalls the actor would “get edgy” whenever he was about to shoot a scene that required deep emotion.
READ MORE | Brad Pitt accused by son Pax of ‘terrorising’ the Jolie-Pitt clan
“Brad had grown up with men who held their emotions in check; I believed the point of the [Legends of the Fall] novel was that a man's life was the sum of his griefs . . . Yet the more I pushed Brad to reveal himself, the more he resisted. So, I kept pushing and Brad pushed back.”
He recalls one of their clashes, writing, “I don’t know who yelled first, who swore, or who threw the first chair. Me, maybe? But when we looked up, the crew had disappeared. And this wasn’t the last time it happened.”
Yet he admits he was the one to blame at the time because he pushed Brad’s buttons.
Ed recalls giving Brad an instruction in front of the crew, which he admits was a “stupid, shaming provocation”.
“Brad came back at me, also out loud, telling me to back off. The considered move would've been to tell the crew to take five and for the two of us to talk it out. But I was feeling bloody-minded and not about to relent.
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“I was angry at Brad for not trusting me to influence his performance. Also for the reluctance he’d shown after the first table read. Who knows, I might even have been acting out my own inability to be vulnerable.”
Ed, whose film credits include Blood Diamond, Shakespeare in Love and Traffic, says they butted heads on the direction of Brad’s character, Tristan Ludlow, and that when he showed Brad the final edit of the movie, he was not pleased.
“He felt I’d underplayed his character’s madness.”
Despite his grievances he goes on to describe the Oscar winner as a great guy, who was “a forthright, straightforward person”.
Brad’s temper first came to light during his split from actress Angelina Jolie.
The Maleficent star famously accused him of getting physical during a private flight from France to the US in 2016, which resulted in her filing for divorce.
READ MORE | Angelina Jolie on how her children kept her sane amid divorce drama
She claimed Brad (now 60) attacked her and two of their six children, who ranged in age from eight to 15 at the time, while in a drunken rage.
In her divorce filing she said he “pulled her into the bathroom in the back of the plane, grabbed her head and shook her, then pushed her into the bathroom wall”.
She also claims he choked one of the children and struck another in the face.
In a statement at the time, Brad’s reps called her claims “completely untrue”. After a subsequent investigation by the FBI, no charges were filed against the actor.
Brad later admitted in a GQ Style interview that the divorce had been a “huge generator for change” and that he’d quit drinking and was undergoing therapy.
Sources: dailymail.co.uk, independent.co.uk, bbc.com
