Okay, so this sweating kid shows up, late for the interview. I needed a houseboy, Man Friday, secretary, someone to walk the dog and clean the pool – but he says to me, "I'm gonna be a movie star. I just got here from Springfield, Missouri. I need this job." I was from Wisconsin, just up the river, so to speak. He was cute, energetic, and didn't seem flakey. I hired him. His name was Brad Pitt.
He moved in for almost two years, and we had a good friendship. He worked hard, but the job was loose, giving him time to study acting and to audition, so it was a good partnership as well. He loved my dog, Herschel, walked him every night, missed his girlfriend back in Missouri (she came to visit, I gave them my house in Palm Springs for the weekend, he cried when she left) (they broke up right after that), hated his complexion, wrote poetry (some I still have) and dreamed of becoming a movie star. I let him do a scene for me one afternoon, in the living room of the house in Los Feliz, and he was really good. I thought, this guy has more talent than I knew. I wanted to help him.
He was having trouble getting work because he needed a Screen Actor's Guild card, and it was frustrating to him. He was tired of dressing up in a chicken suit (a job he'd actually held) and wanted to act to make money (and clean my pool). I was writing ANOTHER WORLD back then, flying to NY a lot, so I told the producers that I had this kid I thought was quite talented and that I wanted to give him a chance. I developed a one-day part for him, a basketball player that a bitter John Hudson meets when he returns to his high school after Viet Nam, a kid full of life that reminds him of himself. Brad was thrilled, we flew him to NY, his first time being treated like a star I guess, and he did a wonderful job. A few days later, I sat down with the producers to discuss giving him a long-tern contract. "He's not appealing," this one idiot woman from P&G said. "No talent," another piped in. The producer said, "Didn't do much for me." So I had to fly home and tell Brad it wouldn't happen, which devastated him. But there was a blessing in it. Had these morons, in their infinite wisdom, not rejected him, he would have been a soap star and nothing more. He got his AFTRA card from being the show, which led to his SAG card, and the rest is history.
