Brad Pitt recalls going to AA amid Angelina Jolie divorce

Brad Pitt is getting candid about his recovery journey post divorce from Angelina Jolie.

The F1 star, 61, made an appearance on the latest episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, where he and the podcast host opened up about their experiences with Alcoholics Anonymous and getting to know one another through the program.

Pitt first spoke about his time in AA in a 2019 profile for the New York Times. He shared that he entered the program in 2016, after Jolie filed for divorce. “It was actually really freeing to just expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he told the outlet at the time. “There’s a great value in that.”  

The actor echoed the sentiment with Shepard during their conversation six years later, telling the host, “It was when I first was getting sober. I just thought it was just incredible, men sharing their experiences, their foibles, their missteps, their wants, their aches, and a lot of humor with it. I thought it was a really special experience.”

He added that it was a “really special experience for him,” after having grown up in the Ozarks in Missouri, where people often mask their feelings and insist “everything’s great.”

Shepard, who has been open about his struggles with substance abuse and sobriety for years, recalled meeting Pitt at the actor’s first meeting and wondering whether the “overwhelming” atmosphere his presence garnered would deter Pitt from opening up in the intended way recovery meetings require. 

The Oscar winner admitted that he initially struggled to share his story during the group sessions, but soon “really grew to love it.”

“You were so f—ing honest,” Shepard told Pitt. “I was like, he must have a stubbornness like I have, which is like, ‘Yeah, all this is going on, but I refuse to let it not let me be a person.'”

Pitt explained that his willingness to be open came from his realization of his mental state. “I was pretty much on my knees, and I was really open,” he told Shepard. “I was trying anything and everyone. Anything anyone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f— up in some areas. And it just meant a lot to me.”

He continued, “When I’ve stepped in s—, I’m pretty good at taking responsibility for it and owning up to it. And now it’s a quest to, you know, ‘What do I do with this? How can I right this?’ And make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Pitt shared that after a few sessions, the meetings became “something I’d look forward to.” He noted that watching everyone else be “so open” gave him “permission in a way to go, ‘Okay, I’m going to step out on this edge and see what happens.’ Then I just really grew to love it.”

The actor admitted that he approached therapy with a similar openness, saying, “When I jumped into therapy then, I was just like, ‘And I did this and I did that and da da da da,'” calling his approach “desperate.”

“Yeah. You don’t come into AA because everything’s working out fantastic,” Shepard quipped.

“No. That’s usually not the entry point,” Pitt responded. 

“It’s not the winner’s club,” Shepard added. “Your hair has gotta be on fire before you go like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go hang with a bunch of dudes and talk about emotions.'”

Pitt and Jolie, 49, began dating after meeting on the set of their 2005 action-comedy film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The couple shared six children together — Maddox, Pax, Shiloh, Zahara, and twins Knox and Vivienne — before tying the knot nearly a decade later in 2014. 

However, two years later, Jolie filed to dissolve their marriage following an alleged 2016 incident on a private jet in which she alleged that Pitt was physically abusive toward her and their children.

In 2022, an FBI report on the incident, which was reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, noted that it had dropped its investigation and no charges would be filed against Pitt. A child services investigation did not determine abuse and it was also closed in 2016, the Associated Press reported.

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While a judge declared Pitt and Jolie legally single in 2019, negotiations over the division of their shared assets and custody of their children resulted in a years long legal battle before they reached a settlement in 2024.

“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt,” Jolie’s lawyer, James Simon, told EW in a statement following the finalization. “She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”

Pitt has since moved on romantically; he and girlfriend Ines de Ramon, 32, were first linked in November 2022 and made their red carpet debut at Pitt’s Venice Film Festival premiere of Wolfs last September.

Listen to Pitt’s full Armchair Expert episode above.