Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are two Hollywood legends who’ve been delivering exceptional performances in various films over the past four decades. Despite growing nearly at the same pace, Cruise seemed to have bagged more blockbuster hits than Pitt, but the actor has a valid reason for it.
At one point in his career, Pitt was influenced by other people and starred in some average films that couldn’t bring out his true potential. He particularly hates director Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 movie, Troy. Although the movie was a financial success, Pitt was not a huge fan of it and saw it as a disappointment. From that point, he decided to value quality over quantity.
Brad Pitt Blamed this Movie for Slowing Down his Career
Actor Brad Pitt has often stated that he was not a huge fan of Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 movie, Troy. In a 2019 interview with The New York Times Magazine, Pitt explained that the experience was so bad that he questioned his acting abilities,
“It was really a turn on ‘Troy.’ I was disappointed in it. When you’re trying to figure things out in your career, you get a lot of advice. People are telling you that you should be doing this, and other people are saying you should be doing that. There was this defining film I never got to do, a Coen Brothers film called ‘To the White Sea.’ We had an opportunity to go, and then it was shut down. Then another interesting opportunity arose, and instead, I was talked into: ‘No, you need to be doing this other thing. You can get to your art project later.’ I ended up taking that advice.”
Pitt was influenced at that point in his life, which led to a slowdown in his popularity. Other stars like Tom Cruise were already rising and with their good decisions, they managed to become more popular than Pitt.
Brad Pitt then Decided to Work in Better Films Rather than More Films
Further in the interview, Pitt explained that he couldn’t bring out his true potential with the character, so he decided to value quality over quantity,
“What am I trying to say about ‘Troy?’ I could not get out of the middle of the frame. It was driving me crazy. I’d become spoiled working with David Fincher. It’s no slight on Wolfgang Petersen; ‘Das Boot’ is one of the all-time great films. But somewhere in it, ‘Troy’ became a commercial kind of thing. Every shot was like, ‘Here’s the hero!’ There was no mystery. So about that time, I made a decision that I was only going to invest in quality stories, for lack of a better term. It was a distinct shift that led to the next decade of films.”
The story of the movie was quite predictable but action-packed sequences were surely exciting, however, no action can save a movie that has an undermining plot. Despite the criticism, Troy earned over $497 million worldwide, making it the 60th highest-grossing film at the time of its release.
Source: The New York Times
