Brad Pitt is better than you.
Of course, he is better-looking than you – that goes without saying. But he is also far more talented, and not just at acting.
You would expect a beautiful, charming, multimillionaire, Oscar-winning film star to at least be a dreadful sculptor, or to have put his name to a slightly embarrassing beauty brand, but neither is the case.
You would understandably assume that a man blessed with that face would have dodgy taste in clothes, a predilection for teenage models or an urge to produce the sort of introspective films nobody wants to watch.
But Pitt – critically acclaimed movie star, purveyor of a face serum made from Provencal grapes from the south of France, talented sculptor and midlife heartthrob – has a droll sense of his own image, and is in danger of being frustratingly good at everything.
For 30 years, Pitt, 58, has been part of our cultural lives – and part of the lexicon. A merely nice-looking man is described as being “No Brad Pitt” because there is actual Brad Pitt, charming the socks off us despite rarely dipping his toe in the talk-show circuit.
One thing he knows how to do is smoulder on the red carpet. Brad Pitt has a great pair of pins – so why not wear a skirt? He regularly dabbles with the sort of clothes you rarely see outside fashion week: slouchy green suits with sunshine-yellow trainers, Barbiecore pink suits, denim separates and masses of jewellery.
As British Vogue recently wrote in an ode to his style on the Bullet Train publicity campaign: “He looks good in anything right now, largely because he’s clearly very happy to be wearing it.”
Pitt has gone from a jeans-wearing heartthrob to a laid-back fashion aficionado – and yes, men on the red carpet have undoubtedly become more daring, but where Gen Z celebrities like Timothée Chalamet and millennials like Harry Styles look like the products of a team of fashion stylists, Pitt appears to have just turned up that way.
When he nearly broke the internet in his knee-length skirt and untucked and partly unbuttoned shirt, he was asked why he chose such a bold outfit. His answer? “We’re all going to die, so let’s mess it up.”
And then there is his just-launched beauty line, Le Domaine. Pitt is not a natural beauty influencer. When asked about his skincare routine he looked baffled, and he has refused to appear in any advertisements for the unisex Le Domaine.
But when it comes to the concept and the development of the product, he has been remarkably hands on.
The result has been well received: grapes from the renowned Château de Beaucastel – a partner of Pitt’s at his own Chateau Miraval in Correns, southern France – have been used to create an antioxidant serum that combines potent properties from the seeds of grenache grapes with the seeds and skin of syrah and mourvèdre grapes to make skin look younger and firmer.
Clearly, the spectre of turning 60 next year has not been the motivating factor behind this venture. “[Ageing] is a concept we can’t escape, and I would like to see our culture embracing it a bit more,” Pitt has said. “I think that we’re learning that if we love ourselves, if we treat ourselves a little better, then there are long-lasting benefits to that.”
Good advice – although loving yourself is surely an easier task if you are Brad Pitt.
He has also made headlines this month for his critically acclaimed sculptures. Pitt is not the first actor to turn his hand to fine art but he is one of vanishingly few who appears to have any real talent.
Last week, he dropped into a museum in Finland to exhibit his sculptures alongside works by his friends Nick Cave and Thomas Houseago. It would be only fair if the resulting artworks were forgettable and artistically wafer-thin; but the consensus seems to be that they are rather good.
One wall of sculpture in particular depicts a gunfight and the result is oddly affecting, with newspaper The Guardian describing it as “pungent and memorable images of pain and violence”.
Whether the pain in question was illustrative of gun deaths in the United States or of his own acrimonious divorce from actress Angelina Jolie is – like the work of all good artists – up for debate.
His relationship with ex-wife Jolie has been the one fraught element of his public life. They publicly battled over custody of their six children and ownership of their French wine estate (Jolie sold her 50 per cent stake to wine group Tenute del Mondo).
Accusations were levied at him of violence and a vicious fight between the warring couple left a private jet soaked in red wine; Pitt, of course, fared far better than the jet’s leather seats and the scandal rolled off him like water off a duck’s back. Male privilege? Or are we suckers for a guy who is not afraid to talk about his feelings?
Because Pitt is even good at having flaws. In a 2017 interview, he revealed he had just started therapy (“I love it”), and had quit drinking and smoking (both tobacco and pot).
In an article in GQ this summer, he quoted 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, Albert Einstein and Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke and talked about effective communication in a relationship, and how a healthy self begins with taking “radical accountability”.
Phew, in 2022 there is not much women find more attractive than that. Mr Perfect, indeed.