Between the requisite primping, preening, and ab crunches, there were women to be had — and the younger the better, apparently. Pitt took up housekeeping with sixteen-year-old nubile coquette Juliette Lewis not long after the two co-starred in the TV movie Too Young To Die?. The relationship endured for three years, ranking as Pitt's longest romantic alliance since setting foot in Hollywood. He buffered his breakup with Lewis by taking up with a girl named Jitka, who owned two bobcats she promptly relocated to Pitt's household. (Incidentally, the house in question was the former residence of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and it boasts its own cave.) Jitka and her exotic pets didn't last long. After landing the romantic lead in the epic drama Legends of the Fall, People magazine saw fit to pronounce Pitt "The Sexiest Man Alive." Though he set out to prove all his crass oglers wrong — or at least earn other qualifiers like "good actor" — his appeal proved potent enough to cross some major boundaries. Singer Melissa Etheridge provided this Brad Pitt testimonial: "One night a few of us, shall we say, lesbians, were in the hot tub watching the guys play basketball in the pool. We were staring at Brad and we all agreed he could change a woman's mind."

Pitt scored his first critical acclaim, not to mention his first Oscar nomination, in the role of a mental patient in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, in which he attempted — with little success — to disguise his comeliness with cross-eyed brown contacts and a psychotic grin. He affected a fair Irish brogue as a charismatic I.R.A. terrorist in 1997's The Devil's Own, and a passable Germanic accent as Austrian journeyer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet, a performance many have credited as the best of his career. Pitt, who commands in the neighborhood of $10 million per film nowadays, signed to play Death in Meet Joe Black, director Martin Brest's lavish, if ill-conceived, 1998 remake of Death Takes a Holiday. He reteamed with Seven director David Fincher for the 1999 release Fight Club, the anarchic story of doomed male Gen-Xers who react to the soul-numbing effects of rampant '90s consumerism by forming underground clubs for the purpose of beating the tar out of each other. Based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same title, the controversial Club may have left critics and audience members divided on the subject of its ultimate efficacy and import, but no one could disagree that Pitt's six-pack abs have only gotten better with time.

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With looks that have inspired countless People magazine covers, Internet shrines, and estrogen surges, Brad Pitt is an actor whose very name inspires drooling platitudes more about male beauty than about acting. Following his breakthrough as the wickedly charming drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind in Thelma and Louise (1991), Pitt became one of Hollywood's hottest properties and spent most of the 1990s being lauded as everything from Robert Redford's heir apparent to the "Sexiest Man Alive." 

Pitt's ascension to his celluloid throne was a long and sometimes frustrating one. The son of a trucking company manager, Pitt was born December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Raised in Missouri, Pitt, the oldest of three children, was brought up in a strict Baptist household. Following his high school graduation, he enrolled at the University of Missouri where he studied journalism and advertising. However, after discovering his love of acting, Pitt dropped out of college two credit hours before he could graduate and moved to Hollywood. Fearful of his parents' reaction, he told them he was going to Pasadena to study at the Art Center College of Design. 

Once in California, Pitt took acting classes and supported himself with a variety of odd jobs that included chauffeuring strippers to private parties, waiting tables, and wearing a giant chicken suit for a local restaurant chain. His first break came when he landed a small recurring role on Dallas, and a part in a teen slasher movie, Cutting Class (1989), marked his inauspicious entrance into the world of feature films. The previous year, Pitt's acting experience had been limited to the TV movie A Stoning in Fulgham County (1988). 1991 marked the end of Pitt's sojourn in the land of obscurity, as it was the year he made his appearance in Thelma and Louise. After becoming famous practically overnight, Pitt unfortunately chose to channel his newfound celebrity into Ralph Bakshi's disastrous Cool World (1992). Following this misstep, Pitt took a starring role in director Tom Di Cillo's independent film Johnny Suede. The film failed to find favor with critics or at the box office, and Pitt's documented clashes with the director allegedly inspired Di Cillo to pattern the character of the vain and egotistical Chad Palomino in his 1995 Living in Oblivion after the actor. 

Pitt's next venture, Robert Redford's 1992 fly-fishing drama A River Runs Through It, gave the actor a much-needed chance to prove that he had talent in addition to his looks. Following his performance in Redford's film, Pitt appeared in Kalifornia and True Romance (both 1993), two road movies featuring fallen women, violent sociopaths, and tumbleweeds. 

Pitt's next major role did not come until 1994, when he was cast as the lead of the gorgeously photographed but woefully uneven Legends of the Fall. As he did in A River Runs Through It, Pitt portrayed a free-spirited, strong-willed brother, but this time had greater opportunity to further develop his enigmatic character. Following the film's release, People magazine dubbed Pitt "The Sexiest Man Alive." 

That same year, fans watched in anticipation as Pitt exchanged his outdoorsy persona for the brooding, Gothic posturing of Anne Rice's tortured vampire Louis in the film adaptation of Interview with a Vampire. Starring opposite Tom Cruise, Pitt enjoyed the further helping of fame that was served up by the film's success. Pitt next starred in the forgettable romantic comedy The Favor (1994) before going on to play a rookie detective investigating a series of gruesome crimes opposite Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995). 

In 1995, Pitt received a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a visionary mental patient in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys; the same year, Pitt attempted an Austrian accent and put on a backpack to play mountaineer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet. The film met with mixed reviews and generated a fair amount of controversy, thanks in part to the revelation that the real- life Harrar had in fact been a Nazi. Furthermore, due to its pro-Tibetan stance, the film also resulted in Pitt's being banned from China for life.