In an Esquire interview, World War Z star-producer Brad Pitt takes himself to task for being a lackadaiscal slacker type in the ’90s, and says he didn’t really get on the stick until about ten years ago, or sometime around 2003. And the immediate result of this attitude change was Troy and Ocean’s 12, if you accept his chronology. I think Pitt really came alive when he did Babel, but that’s me.
“I spent years fucking off,” Pitt says. “But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change. This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany — a decision not to squander my opportunities. It was a feeling of get up. Because otherwise, what’s the point?