Brad Pitt has revealed he’s “off the wagon” 10 years after he first decided to quit drinking.
In a new interview with Esquirepublished Monday, August 10, the Oscar-winning actor admitted that he’s started drinking again. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he said, noting that he now drinks in a “more restrained manner.”
Pitt, 62, first revealed he’s sober in a 2019 profile for The New York Times. The decision followed his contentious split from Angelina Jolie in 2016. The actress filed for divorce days after an incident on their private plane, where he got into a drunken argument with her while their kids were present, per court documents.
Though he denied the allegations, Pitt admitted to NYT, “I had taken things as far as I could take it. So I removed my drinking privileges.”
In 2016, the Fight Club star joined a 12-step program, and he was officially sober by 2019.
In addition to alcohol, Pitt also turned to weed to cope with his rise to fame in the ‘90s. In a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he admitted he was “smoking way too much dope” during his early career.
“I was hiding from the celebrity thing… I was doing the same thing every night and numbing myself to sleep — the same routine: Couldn’t wait to get home and hide out,” he reflected.
It was only when he had children with Jolie that he decided to stop consuming everything other than alcohol. He told GQin 2017, “You realise that a lot of it is… pacifiers… I’m really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family.”
Pitt and Jolie began dating in 2005 and tied the knot in 2014.
The actor adopted Jolie’s first two adopted children, Maddox and Zahara, and their family grew over the years. They adopted another child together, Pax Thein, in 2006. They also share three biological children: Shiloh Nouvel and twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline.
This past year, four of the six children legally dropped “Pitt” from their names. According to US Weekly, the actor feels “hurt” that his kids “don’t want a public association with his last name,” and “it’s been very difficult” for him to cope.
In his new Esquireinterview, the Golden-Globe winner admitted that certain “family stuff” left him feeling “suicidal,” though he did not go into specifics.
It remains unclear when Pitt — who has since moved on with Ines de Ramon — began drinking again. However, he appeared to still be sober last year when he joined Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, where he reflected on his decision to become sober. “I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f*** up in some areas. And it just meant a lot to me,” he said at the time.
A source told Page Sixthat it was “a very personal decision” for Pitt to begin drinking again, emphasising that the actor “knows what those limits are and understands drinking in moderation requires a level of discipline and self-awarenes.”
2026-08-11 17:34:00
