Inside Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s pottery bromance | CPT PPP Coverage

In a less predictable tangent from acting, Pitt has taken up pottery and sculpture over the past decade. For the latter, Pitt joined his Johnny Suede co-star and longtime friend, Nick Cave, to create a sculpture exhibition alongside their mentor, esteemed artist Thomas Houseago. “For Nick and I, this is a new world and our first entry,” Pitt told Finnish broadcaster Yle at the opening ceremony in Finland last September. “It just feels right.”

“To me, it’s about self-reflection. It’s about where I have gotten it wrong in my relationships, where have I misstepped, where am I complicit,” he added. “For me, it was born out of ownership of what I call a radical inventory of self, getting really brutally honest with me and taking account of those I may have hurt, moments I have just gotten wrong.”

Most of Pitt’s sculpture involves plaster moulding, which ties into his other practical hobby, pottery. He reportedly began making pottery at Houseago’s Los Angeles studio in 2017; the hobby became useful as a healthy distraction during his divorce from Angelina Jolie, which was finalised in 2019. 

At around the same time, Pitt was busy working on Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood alongside DiCaprio. In 2019, it was reported that Pitt invited Leonardo DiCaprio, also an amateur potter, to his home studio. 

“Brad’s got his own sculpting studio at his house, and Leo loves coming over to use it,” a source close to the actors told the Sun in 2019. “They sometimes hang out with Brad’s artist pals, but other times it’s just the two of them. Leo brings sandwiches over from their favourite place, Fat Sal’s, and they spend their boys’ nights creating art until the early hours.”

In an interview with GQ, Pitt described pottery as not an art but rather a “solo, very quiet, very tactile kind of sport”. 

“I think it was Picasso who talked about the moment of looking at the subject and paint hitting canvas, and that is where art happens,” Pitt added. “For me, I’m having a moment of getting to feel emotion at my fingertips. But to get that emotion to clay—I just haven’t cracked the surface. And I don’t know what’s coming. Right now, I know the manual labour is good for me, getting to know the expansiveness and limitations of the materials. I’ve got to start from the bottom, I’ve got to sweep my floor, I’ve got to wrap up my shit at night, you know?”