Brad Pitt Reveals How His Split From Angelina Jolie Impacted His ‘Ad Astra’ Performance

Making Ad Astra was anything but easy for Brad Pitt. The 55-year-old actor had to tap into his worst life experiences to make the chilling film about an astronaut who tries to search for his missing father in the outer edges of space.

During a recent interview with NPR, Brad was asked if he thought about his 2016 separation from Angelina Jolie when shooting the film and he simply replied, “I would be exploring it whether there was a script that allowed that or not.”

“A breakup of a family is certainly an eye-opener that as one — and I’m speaking in general again — but as one needs to understand, I had to understand my own culpability in that, and what can I do better,” he added. “Because I don’t want to go on like this.”

Brad is a proud dad of six — including Maddox, 18, Pax, 15, Zahara, 14, Shiloh, 13, and 11-year-old twins, Vivienne and Knox. He shares all of his children with Angelina and, in a previous interview with The New York Times, he opened up about what life was like for him after leaving the actress.

“I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” he said. While trying to live a more healthier lifestyle, Brad took himself to Alcoholics Anonymous and spent a little more than a year there trying to get better.

“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard. It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself,” he recalled about his time with the group. “It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself. There’s great value in that.”

Unfortunately, there’s still no signs that Brad and Angelina would be getting back together. However, their split did teach Brad a lot about carrying “pain.”

“The fact is, we all carry pain, grief and loss,” he said. “We spend most of our time hiding it, but it’s there, it’s in you. So you open up those boxes.”

Here’s to Brad channeling his feelings to help him deliver a moving performance in Ad Astra.