Brad Pitt was nearly fired from his first movie role after speaking as an extra.
Brad Pitt nearly got fired from one of his early movie roles
The 61-year-old star made an uncredited appearance as a waiter in the 1987 film No Man’s Land and explained that he spontaneously added a line of dialogue whilst pouring champagne in an attempt to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) – much to the displeasure of the crew.
Brad told Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast: “It’s a restaurant scene. The main characters are Charlie Sheen and D.B. Sweeney, and a bunch of other actors that I wasn’t necessarily aware of. I am the waiter. I’m supposed to bring up champagne and pour champagne. They show me how to do it. You gotta pour. You spin. You wipe the thing.”
The F1 actor explained how he took a chance by speaking in the scene to obtain his SAG card.
Pitt said: “The whole game was, how do you get your SAG card? Because you can’t get a job if you don’t have your SAG card, but you can’t get your SAG card unless you’ve had a job. It’s this catch-22.”
The Hollywood icon continued: “Like a jackass, they’re doing the scene. I get to the last actor – and she seemed lower on the totem pole? Maybe? And, literally, the scene is going on, I pour her champagne and I go, ‘Would you like anything else?’ It was ‘CUT! CUT! CUT!’
“The first AD runs over, ‘You do that again, you’re out of here!!!’ It was just a shame for the rest of the night.”
Meanwhile, Brad revealed recently that he would urge his younger self to “trust your voice” if he had the opportunity to go back in time.
The World War Z actor told E! News: “Don’t sweat it, bro. Trust yourself. Really, just trust that voice. So many things I agonised that were just a waste of time, I agonised over in the early years. Really, just trust your voice.”
Pitt also reflected on how his movie career has evolved over the years and pointed out that it mirrors the trends of the film industry.
He explained: “It’s gone through so many incarnations in the sense of, when the ’90s came in it was all about independent cinema and getting back to this ’70s kind of filmmaking.
“Then we saw in the 00s, the blockbuster was emerging again, and then streamers came on and just changed everything all over again.
“The cool thing about it is, there’s just more and more people getting opportunities. This pool of talented people always existed.”
