Brad Pitt Details Suicidal Ideation Amid “Family Stuff”

Content warning: This article includes discussion suicide. 

Brad Pitt is sharing insight into a dark personal struggle. 

The F1 star recently detailed that he experienced a “little period” of suicidal ideation that shifted his perspective on mental health. 

“I was never suicidal in any way,” Pitt explained to Esquire in an interview published Aug. 10. “It just was not my makeup. In fact, if I have any afflictions, it’s probably being a congenital optimist.”

Indeed, the 62-year-old—dad to Maddox, 24, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, Pax, 22 and 18-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne with ex Angelina Jolie—admitted that his optimism has helped him “many times” but also caused him grief. 

“As my forever-funny friend David Fincher will say, ‘Yeah, you see the glass as half full,’” he continued. “‘but it’s half full of urine.’”

However, there was a brief stint in Pitt’s life recently where darker thoughts took over.

“In that one little period, I just thought—I just couldn’t—just didn’t see a way out,” he explained. “The pain was so oppressive that—I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel—I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief.”