The Tree of Life (2009)
It’s a glorious week for Brad Pitt and the Inglorious Basterds, with several major awards nominations and the film’s debut on DVD. Now, Pitt’s fellow cast members are sounding off on what their leading man was really like off-screen.
The consensus: Brad’s anything but “basterdly.”
Director Quentin Tarantino says Pitt is all dude. “The thing that really just comes to my mind when you say something like that is – he is a guy,” Tarantino told PEOPLE at the launch party for the Basterds DVD at Los Angeles’s New Beverly Theater. “He’s a cool guy. You can have cool and fun man/boy discussions with him.”
The director has witnessed Pitt’s evolution since the star appeared in 1993′s True Romance, which Tarantino wrote. “One of the things that I loved working with him for on this movie was that I think that I’m working with the best Brad Pitt that I could be working with. He’s really grown into his iconic star status,” he says. “He’s a man now. He can be the sort of soldier.”
Costar Diane Kruger called Pitt “a devoted father. He’s really good with his kids, really amazing. They look up to him. It’s really nice to see that he’s so devoted.”
The Office star B.J. Novak, who plays one of Pitt’s soldiers in the film, described the star as “thoughtful” and “caring.” “He wanted to strike up conversations. He was thoughtful and he worked as hard as anybody,” Novak said. “I really felt like all that security around him, those vans and guards and stuff that looks like he would use to keep his life cooler, I think he just uses that to shut out the world and be more normal. Once he got in past the security team and everything, he was as normal and collaborative and happy as you can be.”
His cast members were also eager to ask about Pitt’s past film roles. “We all wanted to ask him about Kalifornia, True Romance, Fight Club, and he was totally fine with that! He loves it. He’s into making great movies,” said Eli Roth, the Hostel director who also played one of the war film’s basterds.
Roth adds: “He watched Hostel and then came in the next day and said, ‘Roth, you bastard! I couldn’t sleep at all last night, damn it!’ He was like, ‘You are way sicker than I thought.’ I think I went up a few notches in his book.”