This week, aging movie heartthrobs Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp showed their differing approaches to trying to get the public to still like them after being embroiled in high-profile personal scandals related to their respective problems with alcohol abuse.
Pitt, 61, opened up in an interview Monday with Dax Shepard, host of the Armchair Expert podcast, about how they got to know each other in Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, as People reported. Pitt previously revealed to the New York Times in 2019 that he began going to the organization’s 12-step meetings during his very public divorce from Angelina Jolie, which following his alleged drunken and abusive behavior on a private plane ride with her and their six children in September 2016.
Pitt called AA an “amazing thing,” implying that he’s currently sober and healthy. He told Shepard that he was “pretty much on his knees” when he started the program, People reported. “I needed rebooting. I need to wake the (expletive) up in some areas, and it just meant a lot to me,” he said.
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA – DECEMBER 12: Johnny Depp in the Green Room on Closing Night on of the Red Sea International Film Festival 2024 on December 12, 2024 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival)
Pitt’s interview with Shepard dropped a few days before his hotly anticipated racing movie, “F1,” is set to open in theaters. He also proudly posed on the red carpet at the film’s London premiere with Tom Cruise.
Depp, meanwhile, also has a movie coming out. It’s called “Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness,” and it’s an arthouse biopic he directed about the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani.
It’s fair to assume that “Modi” won’t be the summer blockbuster that “F1” could be — or that Depp routinely starred in during his run as the heavy-drinking Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Still, Depp, like Pitt, has to charm an interviewer for the sake of promoting his movie.
Depp certainly followed a different strategy than Pitt while talking to a writer for the Sunday Times. In the interview that was published over the weekend, Depp leaned into his reputation as a hard-drinking, iconoclast while Pitt was eager to emphasize that he’s healthy, in control and deserving of headlining a movie with a reported $200 million budget.
In Depp’s rented home in London, he hosted the Times writer for “an epic, fun, bizarre, intense rollercoaster of a session, starring a broad range of drinks, starting with Aperol,” an Italian aperitif.
In 2018, Depp also famously invited a writer for Rolling Stone into his London home for “a three-course meal of pad Thai, duck and gingerbread with berries,” which the actor accompanied with tobacco, hashish and a “never-ending reservoir of wine that is poured into goblets.”
During Depp’s latest interview, the actor specifically drank wine and rum, while sitting on a sofa, barely moving, “a slumped presence,” who delivered “a ramble of many thoughts,” “punctuated by frequent bouts of raucous laughter.”
But The Times reported that Depp became more animated when talking about his public battles with his ex-wife Amber Heard, which involved two messy, salacious court fights that focused on her physical abuse allegations and his excessive drinking. At one point during the discussion about Heard, the actor took a break “to visit the lavatory” as more drinks were poured, including a glass of his own brand of rum.
Depp and Heard married in 2015, but she filed for divorce in May 2016 and sought a restraining order against him. They settled their divorce a few months later, with Depp agreeing to pay her $7 million, which she said would go to charities. Depp first went to court after The Sun tabloid in the U.K. labeled him “a wife beater.” That libel case was tried in the U.K. and Depp lost, with the judge saying that “the great majority” of the assaults alleged by Heard had been proven.
Still, Depp sued again in 2019, this time in Virginia after Heard penned a Washington Post op-ed in which she portrayed herself as a survivor of sexual violence. This time, Depp succeeded in convincing a jury that she defamed him.
As much as Depp’s loyal fans harnessed social media to effectively drive Heard out of America, the jury also concluded that he and Heard “were both abusive to each other,” The Times reported.
It appears that Hollywood studios are still reluctant to work with Depp. During his battles with Heard, Depp also faced allegations in industry trade publications that he had become unprofessional on film sets and lost much of his $650 million fortune on excessive, self-indulgent spending, including a reported $30,000 a month on wine, as Rolling Stone and The Times reported.
During his Times interview, Depp railed against three particular people in Hollywood who “did me dirty,” One was his long-time agent who testified in one of his court cases that studios had become reluctant to use him because of his tardiness on set. But the actor argued that the abuse allegations Heard leveled against him unfairly made him “like a crash test dummy for MeToo. It was before Harvey Weinstein.”
“As weird as I am, certain things can be trusted,” Depp argued. “And my loyalty is the last thing anybody could question. I was with one agent for 30 years, but she spoke in court about how difficult I was. That’s death by confetti, these fake (expletives) who lie to you, celebrate you, say all sorts of horror behind your back, yet keep the money — that confetti machine going — because what do they want? Dough.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – JUNE 23: Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise attend the European Premiere of F1 ® The Movie at Cineworld, Leicester Square on June 23, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Such talk from Depp — perhaps while in his cups — may not endear him to Hollywood executives or convince them he’s a safe hire for the next summer blockbuster. But maybe some auteur will want to give him a cool supporting role that could put him in contention for an Oscar, as Quentin Tarantino did for Pitt in his hit 2019 film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Meanwhile, Depp may not care about becoming sober, like Pitt, but he can at least say that he’s on good terms with his children, Lily-Rose, 25, and Jack, 22, with his ex-partner, Vanessa Paradis. Depp talked to the Times writer about advice he gives to his children, warning them about the hazards of becoming an actor. But he’s also proud that his daughter garnered excellent reviews for her role in “Nosferatu.”
Unfortunately for Pitt, his talk about going to AA and to therapy has reportedly not convinced his six children that he’s changed for the better — even as the “Fight Club” actor told Shepard that he’s “pretty good at taking responsibility and owning up” to his past bad behavior.
Over the past year, it’s been reported that Pitt has become estranged from all six of his children following his bitter, nine-years-long divorce battle with Jolie. Earlier this month, the Daily Mail said that Pitt still holds out hope for a reconciliation with some of his children but that he’s resigned to never having a relationship with his two oldest sons, Maddox and Pax.
It also was reported last summer that Pitt also has “virtually no contact” with his oldest daughter, Zahara, 20, while his 19-year-old daughter Shiloh hired an attorney to file a legal petition to formally drop Pitt’s last name from her own so that she would henceforth be known as Shiloh Jolie, instead of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.