Decades of controversy but Hollywood halo undimmed

A split from Jennifer Aniston, ongoing battles with Angelina Jolie, and the children who don’t want his surname. Just what must Brad Pitt do to tarnish his image

-  Jessica Barrett

It was a perfect spring Los Angeles day in 2005 when Paris and Nicky Hilton walked, hand in hand, into a throng of waiting paparazzi. The cameras clicked and popped as the socialites turned to one another with knowing giggles, safe in the knowledge they’d soon be in every gossip column thanks to their T-shirts. Nicky’s bore the words “Team Aniston” while her sister Paris’s read “Team Jolie”.

The shirts had been acquired at cult Beverly Hills boutique Kitson, whose owner Fraser Ross had hastily monopolised on a growing celebrity story: the split of Brad Pitt and Friends actor Jennifer Aniston, and his rumoured new romance with his sultry Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Angelina Jolie.

Those Kitson T-shirts were just the start of a tabloid narrative that pitted Jolie and Aniston against one another for well over a decade. Even when Jolie and Pitt announced their own divorce in 2016, attention turned to Aniston, with reports pondering her reaction (which she, of course, never gave).

Their A-list love triangle has proven irresistible to tabloids and magazines. Aniston and Jolie were painted as bitter rivals, despite neither of them ever commenting on the other. In fact, Aniston had said in 2005 that she never overtly blamed Jolie for her divorce, only remarking, “It’s just complicated” (you can say that again).

And while not immune to that media cacophony, somehow Brad Pitt’s nice guy image remained largely intact. Aniston herself helped Pitt close the chapter on any post-split bad blood when she was photographed with her hand on his chest at the 2020 Screen Actors Guild awards, where he won an award for his turn in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Later that year, they both appeared on Zoom for a pandemic charity event, during which she called him “honey”.