Brad Pitt

I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself.

You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man.

My happiest moment is the day they call wrap and I'm free. I'm not looking back.

I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

I had a very supportive family environment that gave me room to explore and discover things about myself.

America is a country founded on guns. It's in our DNA. It's very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don't feel safe, I don't feel the house is completely safe, if I don't have one hidden somewhere. That's my thinking, right or wrong.

I'm 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that's it. I don't think I'll ever be hip again!

Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.

I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there.

You never know when I might decide to work in a Bollywood film and do one of those dance numbers with the whole crew in the backdrop.

Given a chance, I would like to work with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan because she's a versatile actor.

I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.

I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house.

I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.

When I first got out to Hollywood, they were pushing me for sitcoms, and I didn't really have an interest in them. I wanted to do films and slowly worked that way. And then it became, I guess, this curse of the leading man.

I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life.

I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that.

When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance.

I'm satisfied with making true choices and finding the woman I love, Angie, and building a family that I love so much.

One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her.

How many stories have you read that aren't true, stories about me and Angie being married or fighting or splitting up? And when we don't split up, there's a whole new round that we've made up and we're back together again!

The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead.

My kids are just waiting for me at home. I'm their father. They're wondering, 'When's Daddy coming home?'

When I first started, they were trying to get me into sitcoms - I think because I had that kind of Wonder Bread look and my hair always went into place. I kept saying, 'I'm not good at sitcoms. I don't know how to do that.'

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film.

If I'm going to work, I want to work with my wife.

There are no Hallmark cards that define the next chapter, or the value of a history together.

I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there.

My training is documented on film.

I'm sure they're saddened by me, and I get frustrated with them. But I love them, and at the end of the day if they need me or if they need anything, I'm there for them. Family.

At the end of the day, we get to be parents, greeting our lovely, crazy children and talking about their day, making sure they brush their teeth, so all the tension from our day is tabled... until the next.

I've worked with some really great directors, and I'm really choosy about them because they're telling the story at the end of the day.

I start asking a lot of questions about my own life, and it's not necessarily fun, but it's a good exercise.

I see religion more as a truck stop on your way to figuring out who you are.

I die really well, by the way. It's one of my strong points. I just take a bullet well.

I didn't realize how interesting the place I come from is until I left home and saw how other cultures handled things differently.

We sometimes let ourselves be rated too much by others - we put so much emphasis on a paycheck or what a magazine says.

I'm an Obama supporter, no question. But it doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from the other side.

I am obsessively bent on quality - to an unhealthy degree.

You can't be different for different's sake, and this doesn't always work, but you have to separate yourself from the normal read. Of course, it has to be truthful. If it's not truthful, don't waste your time.

I grew up on particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that. It was less about a career than finding the films I wanted to see.

The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time.

It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

If I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.

Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night.

I tell all the young guys, don't make choices because somebody else is telling you it's good from a career-maintenance perspective.

In some ways, I'm still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I'm trying to find my way.

My affliction has been... I can make something or draw something or design something better than I can explain it.