Brad Pitt makes shock family remark amid estrangement from the children he shares with ex Angelina Jolie
Brad Pitt is reflecting on his mistakes after his bitter divorce from Angelina Jolie officially came to an end — while his fractured relationship with their six children remains unresolved.
Pitt, 61, and Jolie, 50, who share Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, and 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, married in 2014 after falling for each other on the set of Mrs. & Mrs. Smith.
Jolie filed for divorce in 2016—just days after a now-infamous private plane incident in which she accused Pitt of being abusive toward her and the kids.
Though the acrimonious divorce was finalized in December, the fallout has lingered, with several children reportedly dropping Pitt's last name and the actor now believing his relationship with two of them is 'unfixable.'
On Monday night, amid the turmoil, Pitt opened up about how important family is to him - amid his ongoing and escalating estrangement from his children.
Speaking at the F1 premiere in Mexico City - he said: 'No matter the mistake, you just learn from [it] and move on,' he told ET. 'It'll lead to the next success.'
The Oscar winner continued, 'When you get to my age, you realize how important it is to surround yourself with the people you love, the people that love you back.'
'Friends, family, and that's it,' he added. 'From there, we get to go make things. It's a pretty simple, I think, equation.'
The interview comes after a source exclusively told DailyMail.com how Pitt felt after Pax was pictured last month stumbling out of the Chateau Marmont, propped up by several friends.
'He has zero concern with what Pax does or doesn't do. [Pax's] actions reflect who he is,' the insider said.
'Brad honestly considers his relationship with Pax unfixable,' they added.
The source went on to say that the actor doesn't appear to be planning any outreach to either of his adopted sons: 'Pax and Maddox have made it abundantly clear how they feel, and Brad has nothing to say about either of them.'
As to his other children, Pitt, the source says, 'holds out hope that the others will one day come around. Time heals wounds.'
A source close to Jolie hit back at her ex husband, saying: 'Brad continues to play the victim. His fractured relationship with his children is a direct result of how he has treated them.
Nine years on from Angelina and Brad's split, Pitt now appears ready to cut ties with at least two of his children while desperately holding out hope for reconcile with the other four; (Pictured: Brad and Angelina with Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne in 2011).
'He should stop blaming others. If he wants to rebuild a relationship with the kids, he should acknowledge his own actions and make amends.'
Meanwhile, Shiloh legally changed her last name last year on the day she turned 18, dropping Pitt and officially opting to be known as Shiloh Nouvel Jolie.
At least three of the other four kids appear to have informally dropped the famous last name.
Zahara, a student at Spelman College in Georgia, adopted in 2005, reportedly goes by the surname Jolie - as does Vivienne, who with her twin brother Knox will turn 17 on July 12.
Brad's F1 interview also comes after he made a rare — and slightly defensive — comment about his girlfriend Ines de Ramon.
The Oscar winner was first linked to the 32-year-old jewelry designer back in 2022 after they were spotted together at a Bono concert.
The couple has kept their relationship mostly private, only making their public debut in July 2024 at the British Grand Prix, while Pitt was filming his upcoming Formula 1 movie.
In a new interview with GQ for the magazine's 2025 Summer Issue — alongside F1 co-stars Damson Idris and Lewis Hamilton — Pitt was asked whether their appearance at a Formula 1 race was intentionally timed to promote the film.
'No, dude, it's not that calculated,' Pitt replied bluntly.
'If you're living—oh my God, how exhausting would that be? If you're living with making those kinds of calculations? No, life just evolves. Relationships evolve.'
He also addressed the constant scrutiny over his private life, noting it's been part of his reality for decades.
'My personal life is always in the news. It's been in the news for 30 years, bro. Or some version of my personal life, let's put it that way.'
One example of that media scrutiny, of course, is his split from ex-wife Jolie.
But when asked whether he felt any relief after their divorce was officially finalized in late 2024 following years of drawn-out legal battles, Pitt downplayed the moment.
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Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Are there any left?
By all accounts, Brian Wilson was a genius. His fellow greats Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney both used the word in their tributes to the creative force behind the Beach Boys, who died this week aged 82. So did John Cale, Mick Fleetwood and Elton John. And so did Wilson's bandmates, who wrote in a joint statement: 'The world mourns a genius today.' You may imagine Wilson gradually accrued such a vaunted standing. Artistic legacy is largely dependent on the longevity of mass appeal, and the fact that the Beach Boys' opus Pet Sounds remains one of the most celebrated and beloved records of all time almost 60 years since its release is proof enough of his incredible talent. Wilson's claim to genius status began with a 1966 PR campaign masterminded by the ex-Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. Fortunately, Wilson's output justified it, and after spreading like wildfire through the British music press the 'Brian Wilson is a genius' rhetoric quickly caught on, 'especially with the UK public', says Wilson's biographer, David Leaf. It has been the consensus ever since. Do we just imagine musical geniuses are anointed in retrospect because we no longer have any? It is extremely difficult to argue that any artist of the last 30 years has reached the trailblazing standard of Wilson, Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie. The remaining members of those acts are all over 80 (with the sole exception of Ronnie Wood at 78); Stevie Wonder is 75, Brian Eno is 77, Ralf Hütter, the surviving founder of Kraftwerk, is 78. The most recent claimants to the musical genius title are generally considered to have been Michael Jackson and Prince, both of whom died relatively young. Soon, the very idea of a living legend will be a thing of the past. In pop music, which reveres the new, genius is synonymous with innovation. Obviously, it is no coincidence that all of our unique and innovative musical minds were of a similar generation, starting work in the 1970s – at the very latest – when all the new drum, guitar and keyboard sounds and most resonant, memorable melodies were there for the taking. Such was the virgin territory before them, the Beach Boys even had the opportunity to sonically codify California, one of the most culturally significant places on the planet. 'I guess I just wasn't made for these times,' Wilson once sang. But if he hadn't been operating in those lonely years, would he have been considered a genius at all? What is also quite clear is that musical progress didn't abruptly end half a century ago. There is still as-yet-unheard music to be made – and made it is, all the time. Generic fusions, formal variations and experimental production techniques are not infinite but they are definitely not exhausted, and some have even coalesced into era-defining movements, as 21st-century genres such as grime, trap and hyperpop prove. Some genres – including grime, which can be convincingly traced back to the British producer Wiley and his turn-of-the-millennium experiments; and hyperpop, the brainchild of the London producer AG Cook and his PC Music collective – even have specific originators. Yet they still haven't produced any bona fide musical geniuses. First, the entirely explicable part. The demise of the monoculture – due to technology's fracturing of the media and cultural landscape – means only the most aggressively mainstream and inoffensively palatable acts (Adele, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift) are able to command the same level of fame and musical familiarity as their 1960s counterparts. Meanwhile, invention has remained staunchly at the cultural fringes – and if it does get anywhere near the zeitgeist, the journey is leisurely. Grime took off a full decade after its creation, thanks to Skepta and Stormzy; so did hyperpop, which reached the masses last summer in the guise of Charli xcx's Brat. This is another reason why musical genius is so thin on the ground: the people who do the actual innovating rarely end up in the spotlight themselves. This seems especially so in comparison with the 1960s; it is impossible to separate personal achievement from the decade's goldrush – a manic crusade to push pop and rock to its absolute limits. The famous rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles – healthy competition for the latter, says Leaf, if not so much for the former – accelerated progress and incentivised change. The pressure is also thought to have contributed to the decline in Wilson's mental health later in the decade. But then comes the more mysterious part. What is so astonishing about Wilson is how many different groundbreaking things he did simultaneously. In the studio, 'he was inventing a new way of making popular music,' Leaf says. 'What he called modular recording – recording bits and pieces of a song and then piecing it together.' He also pioneered the idea of one person helming all elements of a recorded song: composition, arrangement, performance, mixing, production. On top of that, he did something lyrically radical. He transformed pop into an 'emotional autobiography,' says Leaf. 'He was determined to put his feelings on to the recording tape and share it with the world,' which at that time was very much not the norm. Many of pop's canonical artists were similar: Dylan didn't just single-handedly make popular music a vessel for poetry, he also infused it with an all-new attitude and emotional palette (cynicism, disgust, rebellion), while conflating his previous folk fare with rock to create an entirely new sound. Dylan's decision to go electric has become emblematic of the musical genius's requirement to shock. Even Pet Sounds, an onslaught of loveliness, disturbed the band's record label with its leaps of progress, says Leaf. Nowadays, pop music is only really controversial where it overlaps with sex and violence; it is practically impossible to sonically surprise the listening public. The prospect of the end of musical innovation is something students and lovers of guitar music have already had to make peace with – at this point, nostalgia is inherent to the genre. 'I'm aware it's impossible to make genuinely new, novel guitar music, and so I tend to lean into anachronism,' was how Owen Williams, frontman of my new favourite old-sounding band, the Tubs, once put it. Just as selling out became a respected career move, explicit derivation is now an artform in itself; in recent years Beyoncé has stayed at the forefront of pop by essentially becoming a kind of musical historian. There is one thing that does feel jarring about the slowed pace of musical progress. Technological advancement has always been woven into sonic novelty – the advent of synths (which Wilson also anticipated), for example, or sampling. Considering technology has accelerated in unimaginable, terrifying ways over the past 20 years, you'd think that might be reflected in the pop zeitgeist. Instead, we have a chart stuffed with tracks that essentially could have been made at any point in the past 50 years. Perhaps the late 20th century – and particularly the 1960s – created a sort of natural selection of music: we found the combinations of notes and rhythms that appealed most to the western human ear and that is what we have continued to rehash. Surely, then, this is a problem artificial intelligence may be able to solve. This is technology determined to get to know us more intimately than we know ourselves. What better way to continue the quest for novel pop perfection that Wilson embarked on 60 years ago? In theory, it could supplant human creativity. In actuality, AI is unlikely to wrest control of pop's soul from humans. That's because musical innovation, and even catchy melodies, have ceded importance to the branding of people. If Swift's gargantuan success is anything to go by – which it probably is – pop's future depends on the carefully honed appeal of an individual human personalities, not what they can do on a keyboard (the musical kind). Swift's approach to her public image and the music business in general is groundbreaking in its own way, even if her music isn't. We will be mourning her as a cultural figure at some point, but a musical genius? That would take some real cognitive dissonance. It seems unlikely we will do so with anyone by the end of this century; we have no currently minted visionaries, although time will tell if anyone retroactively earns the title. What is certain is that as the pop canon continues to splinter into thousands of smaller, personal rosters, we will be losing musicians who mean everything to some people, but not – like Wilson – something to almost everyone.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Brian Wilson was a musical genius: are there any left?
By all accounts, Brian Wilson was a genius. Fellow greats Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney both used the word in their tributes to the creative force behind the Beach Boys, who died this week aged 82. So did John Cale, Mick Fleetwood and Elton John. And so did his bandmates, who wrote in a joint statement that 'the world mourns a genius today'. You may imagine Wilson gradually accrued such a vaunted standing. Artistic legacy is largely dependent on the longevity of mass appeal, and the fact that the Beach Boys' opus Pet Sounds remains one of the most celebrated and beloved records of all time almost 60 years since its release is proof enough of his incredible talent. Wilson's claim to genius status began with a 1966 PR campaign masterminded by ex-Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. Fortunately, Wilson's output justified it, and after spreading like wildfire through the British music press, the 'Brian Wilson is a genius' rhetoric quickly caught on 'especially with the UK public', says Wilson's biographer, David Leaf. It has been the consensus ever since. Do we just imagine musical geniuses are anointed in retrospect because we no longer have any? It is extremely difficult to argue that any artist of the last 30 years has reached the trailblazing standard of Wilson, Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie. The remaining members of those acts are all over 80 (with the sole exception of Ronnie Wood at 78); Stevie Wonder is 75, Brian Eno is 77, Ralf Hütter, the surviving founder of Kraftwerk, is 78. The most recent claimants to the musical genius title are generally considered to be Michael Jackson and Prince, both of whom died relatively young. Soon, the very idea of a living legend will be a thing of the past. In pop music, which reveres the new, genius is synonymous with innovation. Obviously, it is no coincidence that all of our unique and innovative musical minds were of a similar generation, starting work in the 1970s – at the very latest – when all the new drum, guitar and keyboard sounds and most resonant, memorable melodies were there for the taking. Such was the virgin territory before them, the Beach Boys even had the opportunity to sonically codify California, one of the most culturally significant places on the planet. 'I guess I just wasn't made for these times,' Wilson once sang. But if he hadn't been operating in those lonely years, would he have even been considered a genius at all? What is also quite clear is that musical progress didn't abruptly end half a century ago. There is still as-yet-unheard music to be made – and made it is, all the time. Generic fusions, formal variations and experimental production techniques are not infinite, but they are definitely not exhausted, and some have even coalesced into era-defining movements, as 21st-century genres such as grime, trap and hyperpop prove. Adele, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift – inoffensively palatable Some genres – including grime, which can be convincingly traced back to the British producer Wiley and his turn-of-the-millennium experiments; and hyperpop, the brainchild of London producer AG Cook and his PC Music collective – even have specific originators. Yet they still haven't produced any bona fide musical geniuses. First: the entirely explicable part. The demise of the monoculture – due to technology's fracturing of the media and cultural landscape – means only the most aggressively mainstream and inoffensively palatable acts (Adele, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift) are able to command the same level of fame and musical familiarity as their 1960s counterparts. Meanwhile, invention has remained staunchly at the cultural fringes – and if it does get anywhere near the zeitgeist, the journey is leisurely. Grime took off a full decade after its creation, thanks to Skepta and Stormzy; so did hyperpop, which reached the masses last summer in the guise of Charli xcx's Brat. This is another reason why musical genius is so thin on the ground: the people who do the actual innovating rarely end up in the spotlight themselves. This seems especially slow in compared with the 1960s; it is impossible to separate personal achievement from the decade's goldrush – a manic crusade to push pop and rock to its absolute limits. The famous rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles – healthy competition for the latter, says Leaf, if not so much for the former – accelerated progress and incentivised change. The pressure is also thought to have contributed to the decline in Wilson's mental health later in the decade. But then comes the more mysterious part. What is so astonishing about Wilson is how many different groundbreaking things he did simultaneously. In the studio, 'he was inventing a new way of making popular music,' Leaf says. 'What he called modular recording – recording bits and pieces of a song and then piecing it together.' He also pioneered the idea of one person helming all elements of a recorded song: composition, arrangement, performance, mixing, production. On top of that, he did something lyrically radical. He transformed pop into an 'emotional autobiography,' says Leaf. 'He was determined to put his feelings on to the recording tape and share it with the world,' Leaf adds, which was at that time very much not the norm. Many of pop's canonical artists were similar: Dylan didn't just single-handedly make popular music a vessel for poetry, he also infused it with an all new attitude and emotional palette (cynicism, disgust, rebellion), while conflating his previous folk fare with rock to create an entirely new sound. Dylan's decision to go electric has become emblematic of the musical genius's requirement to shock. Even Pet Sounds, an onslaught of loveliness, disturbed the band's record label with its leaps of progress, says Leaf. Pop, sex and violence Nowadays pop music is only really controversial where it overlaps with sex and violence; it is practically impossible to sonically surprise the listening public. The prospect of the end of musical innovation is something students and lovers of guitar music have already had to make peace with – at this point nostalgia is inherent to the genre. 'I'm aware it's impossible to make genuinely new, novel guitar music, and so I tend to lean into anachronism,' is how Owen Williams, frontman of my new favourite old-sounding band, the Tubs, once put it. Just as selling out became a respected career move, explicit derivation is now an artform in itself; in recent years Beyoncé has stayed at the forefront of pop by essentially becoming a kind of musical historian. There is one thing that does feel jarring about the slowed pace of musical progress. Technological advancement has always been woven into sonic novelty – the advent of synths (which Wilson also anticipated), for example, or sampling. Considering technology has accelerated in unimaginable, terrifying ways over the past 20 years, you'd think that might be reflected in the pop zeitgeist. Instead, we have a chart stuffed with tracks that could have essentially been made at any point in the past 50 years. Perhaps the late 20th century – and particularly the 1960s – created a sort of natural selection of music: we found the combinations of notes and rhythms that appealed most to the western human ear and that is what we have continued to rehash. AI to the rescue? Surely, then, this is a problem artificial intelligence may be able to solve. This is technology determined to get to know us more intimately than we know ourselves – what better way to continue the quest for novel pop perfection that Wilson embarked on 60 years ago? In theory, it could supplant human creativity. In actuality, AI is unlikely to wrest control of pop's soul from humans. That's because musical innovation, and even catchy melodies, have ceded importance to the branding of people. If Swift's gargantuan success is anything to go by – which it probably is – pop's future depends on the carefully honed appeal of an individual human personalities, not what they can do on a keyboard (the musical kind). Swift's approach to her public image and the music business in general is groundbreaking in its own way, even if her music isn't. We will be mourning her as a cultural figure at some point, but a musical genius – that would take some real cognitive dissonance. It seems unlikely we will do so with anyone by the end of this century; we have no currently minted visionaries, although time will tell if anyone retroactively earns the title. What is certain is that as the pop canon continues to splinter into thousands of smaller, personal rosters, we will be losing musicians who mean everything to some people, but not – like Wilson – something to almost everyone.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
My unexpected Pride icon: Adriana from The Sopranos fought for acceptance and safety. I can relate
I have never been excited about fancy dress, but when I received the invitation to a Sopranos-themed party a couple of months ago, I knew immediately who I wanted to go as: Adriana La Cerva. As a transgender woman, I empathised deeply with Adriana. I loved her wit, naivety, garish glamour and scandalous moments – the same reason I admire so many of the women in my trans community. Just look to Hunter Schafer or Alex Consani if you want a masterclass in all the above. Some of Adriana's one-liners – 'If you think I'm gonna blow this guy for your sick purposes, you are sadly mistaken' – contain the sort of lewd, campy bravado of a ballroom queen. This is not the aspiration of gender transition, of course. But it does approximate to some of the ways trans women respond to their exclusion by a culture that expects women to be respectable, polite and discreet about their sexualities. But there is a more devastating side of Adriana that speaks to the trans experience: her quest for belonging. She longed for approval not only as a source of validation, but as a means of securing safety and stability. Her greatest struggle was that she craved acceptance from men and the family, even though she could never quite fit into their world. Adriana's death in The Sopranos is devastating. After betraying the Soprano crime family by choosing to cooperate with the FBI rather than face prison, she confesses to her abusive fiance, Christopher. He turns her in and she is then lured into a car and taken to a quiet forest to be killed. As a trans woman, I identified with Adriana, and not just because of that iconic wit, naivety, glamour, and scandalousness. Adriana never belonged. She was beautiful, but in the end, it wasn't enough. For much of the series Adriana was viewed by the men around her as a classic trophy wife: young, hot, highly desirable. This doesn't last. Adriana's deterioration is slow and drawn out. First, she is diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, which the mafiosos find sexless and amusing. Then, she reveals to Christopher that a previous abortion may have left her infertile. His cruel retort – 'You knew you were damaged goods and didn't tell me' – laid bare his true feelings for Adriana, steeped in ownership and manipulation. Her infertility is also the first real moment we see Adriana begin to lose her power and feminine status. By the end, she dealt with the same predicament many trans woman face too, fighting for recognition, social acceptance and protection. When I think about what it's like to live by the sharpest edge of patriarchal violence, my own life feels stranger than fiction. Adriana resonated with me because she navigated a world where the stakes were highest for women whose biologies didn't align with extremely narrow standards of femininity, where falling short meant not just humiliation, abandonment and alienation, but life-threatening risk. It's no exaggeration to say that my survival is inextricably tied to my appearance – to my body's ability to 'pass' and conform to misogynistic ideals of femininity, just to exist safely in public. The writers of The Sopranos spared us from having to watch our beloved Adriana die: we hear the gunshot, but the camera pans away. It's tempting to interpret this as an invitation to picture some other universe in which she survives. When I walked into the party wearing her tiger-print bodysuit, the one that went TikTok viral last year, I wondered if I was in some way trying to live out the fantasy that the character gets to live an alternative future, one without the constant threat of patriarchy. Dreaming that it could happen feels personal, somehow. Whatever I hope for Adriana's future, I hope for mine, too.
