Featured Image Credit: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images / Sony Pictures
Topics: Brad Pitt, Film and TV, Celebrity
Lucy Devine
Topics: Brad Pitt, Film and TV, Celebrity
Brad Pitt has been accused of 'volatile' behavior while filming 1994 movie, Legends Of The Fall.
The period film, which was directed by Ed Zwick, saw Pitt play Tristan Ludlow, one of three brothers living in rural Montana during World War I.
The brothers all end up falling for the same woman, with the movie charting the trio as they overcome obstacles to maintain their family in the midst of conflict.
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Some 20 years on from the movie, Zwick has spoken about what it was like to film all those years ago.
In an excerpt from his new memoir, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood - as published by Vanity Fair - Zwick described Pitt as 'volatile'.
Describing one 'blowup', he wrote: "I don’t know who yelled first, who swore, or who threw the first chair. Me, maybe? But when we looked up, the crew had disappeared. And this wasn't the last time it happened.
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"It was the first augury of the deeper springs of emotion roiling inside Brad. He seems easygoing at first, but he can be volatile when riled, as I was to be reminded more than once as shooting began and we took each other's measure.
"Sometimes, no matter how experienced or sensitive you are as a director, things just aren't working."
It seems the pair clashed over Pitt's character, Tristan.
"His ideas about Tristan differed from mine," Zwick continued.
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"Brad had grown up with men who held their emotions in check; I believed the point of the [Legends of the Fall] novel was that a man's life was the sum of his griefs... Yet the more I pushed Brad to reveal himself, the more he resisted. So, I kept pushing and Brad pushed back."
Zwick recalled an incident in which he had given Pitt some direction in front of the crew, which he admitted was 'a stupid, shaming provocation'.
"Brad came back at me, also out loud, telling me to back off," he said.
"The considered move would have been to tell the crew to take five and for the two of us to talk it out. But I was feeling bloody-minded, and not about to relent.
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"I was angry at Brad for not trusting me to influence his performance. Also for the reluctance he’d shown after the first table read. Who knows, I might even have been acting out my own inability to be vulnerable.
"But Brad wasn’t about to give in without a fight. In his defense, I was pushing him to do something he felt was either wrong for the character, or more "emo" than he wanted to appear onscreen."
Zwick did explain that the pair would always make up 'and mean it'.
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"[Pitt] is a forthright, straightforward person, fun to be with and capable of great joy. He was never anything less than fully committed to doing his best," he concluded.
UNILAD has reached out to Pitt's reps for comment.