Brad Pitt is a name that needs no representation or recognition. From Se7en to Bullet Train, the man has come a long way and he has established himself as a force to be reckoned with. While plenty of his films have been memorable, it can’t be denied that Troy holds a special place in his filmography.
Why? The 2004 film grossed $483 million worldwide on a budget of $150 million and also introduced the charming actor to a lot of global audiences. But not everything went right during filming and Pitt suffered a hysterically ironic injury.
Brad Pitt Suffered An Ironic Injury During The Filming Of Troy
In a 2019 interview with the New York Times, Brad Pitt talked about the time he got injured while filming Troy. But the injury he sustained was in an ironic part of the body. In The Iliad by Homer, Achilles gets killed after being shot through the Achilles Tendon (that’s now been named after him).
The myth goes that Thetis, his mother, had submerged him in the Styx River so that he could become immortal. But since she held him by his ankle, she missed that one spot. So it was that one vulnerable place where he got shot with an arrow. Since then Achilles’ Heel has been used to describe a vulnerable area.
Turns out, Brad Pitt, who played Achilles in the film, injured his Achilles Tendon while shooting Troy. He ruptured that muscle while performing a stunt in the film. Brad Pitt said:
“In a bout of stupid irony, I tweaked my Achilles’ tendon”.
Due to this, production had to be shut down for multiple weeks since it took time for Pitt to recover. However, the director of the film, Wolfgang Petersen, didn’t really see the humor in it because he was chasing a tight deadline. But we certainly can chuckle at the irony.
Brad Pitt Hated Always Being The Big Hero In Troy
Brad Pitt doesn’t look back at Troy with fond memories. In fact, he revealed that he wasn’t even originally going to star in the film with Orlando Bloom. He was put in it because he had to star in something for Warner Bros. Pitt said:
“I had to do Troy because […] I pulled out of another movie and then had to do something for the studio. So I was put in Troy. It wasn’t painful, but I realized that the way that movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it.”
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So what exactly was his problem with Troy? It was the fact that he couldn’t jam with the commercial aspect of the mega project. Pitt said:
“What am I trying to say about Troy? I could not get out of the middle of the frame. It was driving me crazy… somewhere in it, Troy became a commercial kind of thing. Every shot was like, ‘Here’s the hero!’ There was no mystery.”
Since the original story is hundreds of years old, viewers perhaps weren’t expecting a mystery in any way. Many were just glad to see a big-budget historical action film that was thoroughly entertaining.
Troy is available on HBO Max.
Source: NY Times
