Brad Pitt talks growing up in Missouri, ‘graduation’ at Mizzou & new movie, ‘F1’
If you’re still confused about whether Brad Pitt graduated from the University of Missouri, here’s the straight scoop from Mr. “Fight Club” himself.
He did — and didn’t.
What’s less confusing is that Pitt just scored the biggest opening weekend of his career with the racing movie, “F1,” which opened Thursday.
In a wide-ranging interview with Dax Shepard on the comedian’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Pitt describes why he went through commencement even though he didn’t have enough credits to graduate.
We also learn that Pitt will never miss a Will Ferrrell movie, hangs out on Zillow for the “house porn” and what it was like to be strapped into a Formula 1 race car to play driver Sonny Hayes.
“F1” made an estimated $55.6 million in its opening weekend and earned $144 million worldwide, according to the Associated Press.
Warner Bros. executive Jeffrey Goldstein called Pitt the “secret sauce.”
In a conversation watched on YouTube by more than 1 million people in the last week, Pitt told Shepard he’s wanted to make a racing movie for 20 years.
Before Pitt and Shepard, who share a love for anything on wheels, talked about the film, Shepard told the two-time Oscar winner that he wanted to “know more about Missouri.”
Shepard said he is reading the new biography, “Mark Twain,” by Pulitzer-winning author Ron Chernow. He asked Pitt, who was born in Oklahoma but raised in Springfield, “how close were you to where (Twain) grew up?”
“It would have been the same. It’s the Ozarks… it’s a beautiful country,” Pitt said. “But it’s also the Mason-Dixon line, North and South fought there, it’s birthplace of televangelism, a lot of meth labs in the … you know it can be, there’s this dichotomy that’s kind of always at play.”
“And because it’s this confluence of Midwestern and Southern, I don’t know, it all kinda flattens out there in a way,” he said, referring to the region’s accent.
Pitt described a childhood of riding minibikes, “being at the lake and in bass boats … my dad would give it to us at 12 and we’d take the boat out (by) ourselves … and then driving too early and driving on dirt roads, driving in the rain, driving in the ice …”
At Mizzou, you wanted to do journalism, Shepard asked.
“I wanted to do architecture but there wasn’t an architectural path at Mizzou,” Pitt said. “But they had the BEST journalism school.
“And then I thought, well, OK, I don’t really want to interview people but I’ll design magazines or movie posters. So it was going kinda the design angle.”
The University of Missouri liked the shout-out, posting on X: “A talented actor. A cultural icon. And, most importantly, a Tiger.”
“Is this true, that you left college a week before graduation?” Shepard asked.
“No, actually went through graduation. I just didn’t finish my last week at classes and actually graduate. But my parents were already coming. (Bleeping) walked the line, hat and all,” Pitt laughed, raising his arm like he was throwing his graduation cap into the air.
“You wanted to be able to throw your hat,” Shepard laughed. “That’s a crazy (bleeping) decision.”
“No, because I had decided … come to LA.,” Pitt said. “I had one week left.”
He likened his decision to a moment in the Spike Jonze movie, “Adaptation,” where Chris Cooper tells Meryl Streep why he gave up his passion project of tropical fish: “Done with fish.”
“It felt like that for me … just like ... done,” Pitt said. “I talked to a friend, it had never occurred to me … I had always lamented that movies weren’t an option. I’d always loved movies.
“I met this friend whose dad had a condo in Burbank and said I could stay there for one month. And I went, ‘I’m going to it.’”
“And they’re movin’ to Beverly,” he sang like in the theme song of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
He packed up his Datsun, the one with the bumper hanging off, and he was gone.
“By the way, I still feel like that kid in Missouri who’s, you know, Oklahoma, Missouri, Ozarks, who’s ... still like groping his way through this whole thing,” he said.
“But to me it’s just another craft. Just like anyone who works hard at what they do and has confidence in what they do.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2025 at 1:31 PM.
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