Brad Pitt got himself out of a dark time by attending Alcoholics Anonymous after his highly publicized split from Angelina Jolie.
The actor, whose “Ad Astra” film is hitting theaters on Sept. 20, told the New York Times that he attended AA meetings to combat a drinking problem that was said to have contributed to the downfall of their marriage.
“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard,” he recalled. “It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.”
“It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he added. “There’s great value in that.”
The 55-year-old actor said he attended AA meetings for a year and a half.
In terms of the extent of his past drinking, he said, “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges.”
He also talked about how although he’s perceived as a fixture of Hollywood, the attention that has been cast his way since the 1990s — which was only amplified with his marriages to Jolie and Jennifer Anniston — never sat well with him.
“It was really uncomfortable for me, the cacophony of expectations and judgments,” he said. “I really became a bit of a hermit and just bonged myself into oblivion.”
Pitt was married to Aniston from 2000 to 2005 before Jolie, whom he married in 2014.
As “Ad Astra” was in the works on the heels of his split from Jolie, the film’s writer told the Times that Pitt drew from his current situation to play his role.
“He definitely used the stimuli from his life,” James Gray said. “Now, I didn’t get personal with him about it at all — I don’t think it’s my business, or even my job — but he investigated the essence of the character through himself.”