BEST ACTOR
Brad Pitt in Moneyball
Age 48
Role Real-life Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who revolutionized the way players are scouted.
Oscar History Pitt, who's a nominated producer of Moneyball, scored a Best Actor nod for 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and was nominated for Supporting Actor for 1995's 12 Monkeys.
History Lesson For inspiration, Pitt and director Bennett Miller looked to a time when filmmakers were as suspicious of the established rules as Beane is. ''I love this character because it's reminiscent to me of '70s films,'' says Pitt. ''Looking back at my favorites, it's All the President's Men, it's Dog Day Afternoon. In the late '80s and '90s, we got caught up in this idea that a character had to learn a lesson and be someone else in the end. If you look at the '70s films I was weaned on, it's not [the character] that changed, it's the world around them — just sent it off its axis a few degrees. That's what I saw in Moneyball.''
Diamonds Aren't His Best Friend ''I'm a big sports fan, but not necessarily baseball,'' Pitt admits. So why take this part? ''It was something about these guys questioning from ground zero the way we do things and tearing that apart and starting from scratch. And then going up against a system that became quite antagonistic to that questioning. I'm a sucker for an underdog story.''
Up Next Pitt stars in the zombie-apocalypse flick World War Z, which opens Dec. 21, and mobster drama Cogan's Trade, due at some point in 2012. —Rob Brunner
Role Real-life Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who revolutionized the way players are scouted.
Oscar History Pitt, who's a nominated producer of Moneyball, scored a Best Actor nod for 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and was nominated for Supporting Actor for 1995's 12 Monkeys.
History Lesson For inspiration, Pitt and director Bennett Miller looked to a time when filmmakers were as suspicious of the established rules as Beane is. ''I love this character because it's reminiscent to me of '70s films,'' says Pitt. ''Looking back at my favorites, it's All the President's Men, it's Dog Day Afternoon. In the late '80s and '90s, we got caught up in this idea that a character had to learn a lesson and be someone else in the end. If you look at the '70s films I was weaned on, it's not [the character] that changed, it's the world around them — just sent it off its axis a few degrees. That's what I saw in Moneyball.''
Diamonds Aren't His Best Friend ''I'm a big sports fan, but not necessarily baseball,'' Pitt admits. So why take this part? ''It was something about these guys questioning from ground zero the way we do things and tearing that apart and starting from scratch. And then going up against a system that became quite antagonistic to that questioning. I'm a sucker for an underdog story.''
Up Next Pitt stars in the zombie-apocalypse flick World War Z, which opens Dec. 21, and mobster drama Cogan's Trade, due at some point in 2012. —Rob Brunner
Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Sony Pictures
Oscars: Get to Know the Nominees
Why'd Brad Pitt do ''Moneyball''? What's Octavia Spencer's dialect in ''The Help''? Details on 25 contenders -- and what they're doing next
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