Sporting the golden-boy glow of Robert Redford and the jawline of Kirk Douglas, Brad Pitt is one of the leading movie heartthrobs of the 1990s and 2000s. Pitt grew up in Missouri and studied journalism in college before dropping out to become an actor. He scored as the sexy scoundrel hitchhiker in the 1991 movie Thelma and Louise (with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon), a small role that nonetheless catapulted him to leading man status. Soon known as a movie star who didn't always have to take the starring role, Pitt co-starred with Tom Cruise in Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire (1994), with Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys (1995) and with Harrison Ford in The Devil's Own (1997). His other films have included: Se7en (1995, with Morgan Freeman), the brutal urban psychodrama Fight Club (1999, with Edward Norton), and Spy Game (2001, with Robert Redford); the spoofy ensemble film Ocean's Eleven (2001, with George Clooney) and its sequels Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007); the big-budget star vehicles Troy (2004, with Pitt as the weak-heeled Achilles) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005, opposite Angelina Jolie); and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, with Pitt as Jesse James).
Extra credit: Once engaged to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Pitt married actress Jennifer Aniston in 2000. They divorced in 2005, amid rumors that Pitt had begun a romantic relationship with Angelina Jolie, his co-star from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Those rumors were confirmed early in 2006, when Jolie legally changed her two adopted children's names to Zahara Jolie-Pitt and Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Pitt and Jolie then had a daughter together -- Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, who was born on 27 May 2006 in the country of Namibia -- and adopted a four-year-old boy, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt (b. 2003 in Vietnam). Pitt's children are, in order of age: Maddox (b. 2001 in Cambodia), Pax (b. 2003 in Vietnam), Zahara (b. 2005 in Ethiopia) and Shiloh (b. 2006 in Namibia).
