Image: Cast member Brad Pitt poses on the red carpet at the premiere of “The Big Short” in New York, U.S. on November 23, 2015. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/Files
By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Brad Pitt took to the red carpet at a fan event for his latest film “Allied” in Los Angeles on Wednesday, hours after he was cleared of child abuse allegations and applied for shared custody of his children with Angelina Jolie.
Pitt, 52, had kept a low profile after the Hollywood power couple, dubbed Brangelina, split suddenly in September following an incident on a private plane in which Pitt was reported to have lost his temper in front of one or more of the children.
But Pitt resumed press obligations this week for espionage war thriller “Allied”. On Wednesday he attended a fan event alongside his co-star Marion Cotillard and director Robert Zemeckis, answering a few questions during a Facebook live stream hosted by movie studio Paramount Pictures.
“I don’t know much about the espionage world and what it took to get behind enemy lines and to plant your characters, so that was really interesting,” Pitt said of the film, which will be in theaters on November 23.
The actor plays Canadian army officer Max Vartan, who goes undercover in Casablanca during World War Two, paired up with Cotillard’s lively French spy Marianne Beausejour, to assassinate a German Nazi ambassador.
While the pair flawlessly play a happily wedded couple during their undercover stint, they soon find themselves falling in love for real. But Marianne’s alliances are called into question.
Parts of “Allied” echo Pitt’s 2005 spy action movie “Mr & Mrs. Smith” in which he and Jolie teamed up on screen to play a married couple that keep their espionage lives secret from each other until they’re ordered to assassinate one another. Jolie and Pitt started dating shortly after filming the movie.
On Wednesday a source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Pitt fully cooperated in a comprehensive inquiry in a child welfare case by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which found no wrongdoing on his part.
Pitt was only asked questions related to the film during the live stream interview, from his favorite Zemeckis movie to his grasp of the French language, which he was required to speak in parts of “Allied.”
“I had to work at it really, really hard just to get that far. I say I’m going to get this language, but it may take me a lifetime,” he said.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
