Brad Pitt Goes on ‘Parade’

Brad Pitt tells Parade that one thing that is certain are his kids, Maddox, 6, Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 16 months. Here are some snippets from his interview:

On his increasing doubt in religion as he got older: “I had crises of faith. I thought you had to experience things if you want to know right from wrong. I’d go to Christian revivals and be moved by the Holy Spirit, and I’d go to rock concerts and feel the same fervor. Then I’d be told, ‘That’s the Devil’s music! Don’t partake in that!’ I wanted to experience things religion said not to experience.”

On having scuttled his fundamentalist beliefs by the time he entered college: “When I got untethered from the comfort of religion, it wasn’t a loss of faith for me, it was a discovery of self,” he says. “I had faith that I’m capable enough to handle any situation. There’s peace in understanding that I have only one life, here and now, and I’m responsible.”

On his faith in his family: “What’s important to me is that I’ve defined my beliefs and lived according to them and not betrayed them. One of those is my belief in my family. I still have faith in that.”

On his early taste with fame: “When fame really hit me was when ‘Legends of the Fall’ was released. You get no warning about what celebrity is or how to deal with it. It’s sort of multitiered. The initial stage is feeling discombobulated and not up to the task. I didn’t understand the incessant attention when I went outside, the way people completely focused on me. It made me very uncomfortable. Then you start to see the fickleness of celebrity that it isn’t rooted in something of real value. There is this strange wanting by people to get next to you. It has nothing to do with you but with something they feel they are missing in themselves.”

On the crazy paparazzi: “I understand the tabloid machine. There’s money to be made off of Angie and me, but it has gotten so out-of-hand. There’s no decency, even when it comes to our kids. I mean, yesterday Angie was taking Maddie off to school. There were 30 paparazzi outside. One guy sticks a video camera in Mad’s face, yelling, ‘Maddox! Maddox!’ He doesn’t get a response. He doesn’t know my boy. Mad is already savvy to this, unfortunately. But my 2-year-old dreads being anyplace there are cameras. It scares her. They’re all in her face. My kids are faced with this every day! It’s disgusting. So we’ve been run out of L.A., all the major cities. We just can’t live there. You don’t understand–this is the hunt, the hunt, the hunt! I thought it might be over a year ago. It’s gotten worse.”

Read Brad’s full interview with Parade here and here.