Brad Pitt showed off his six-pack to Geena Davis as her toyboy in 1991’s Thelma and Louise but has since showed off some serious acting chops in a diverse list of films including Fight Club, Babel and The Assassination of Jesse James. After playing a dumb thief in the Coen Brothers comedy Burn After Reading, he’s back in his leading man glory in The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons as a man born in his Eighties who ages backwards.

Did this movie make you think about your own mortality?

When we began the film, David Fincher had already dealt with the death of his father and the writer Eric Roth had lost his mother and then a month into shooting Angie’s (his partner Angelina Jolie) mother passed away, so this idea of mortality and the individual being finite was first and foremost. The thing I walk away with is that time is short. I don’t know if I have a day or ten days or ten years or forty years. So I make sure I don’t waste those moments in any kind of pettiness or bitterness or laziness.

How did you feel seeing yourself as an old man?

I found it really interesting, but it must be said that I got to shape it a little bit so I doubt time and gravity would be as kind to me as I was to myself! But it makes you aware of the process and the stages along the way and where you want to be and where you’ve come from, and I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

How was working with Cate again after Babel?

Cate and I have such an automatic rapport and I have so much respect her. She is one of those actresses that being this long in the game still surprises me by her performances. And when we work together its surprisingly irreverent. We’d get kicked out of acting school, let’s just say that!

How did you handle the aging makeup?

I said I’d never do a film with prosthetics but I couldn’t say no to David Fincher. The makeup guys will tell you they got it down to two and a half hours but they are full of shit! The best we did was four and a half hours, but it was generally five hours because they would do the makeup bit and the plastering and painting and then I’d have to go get the wig on, which would take some time, and then get dressed and all that.

Are you still planning to add to her own personal Brady Bunch with Angelina or are six kids enough?

We haven’t found any reason to stop now. It is chaos in moments but there is such joy in the house. I look down and there is our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia and our girl born in Namibia and our son from Cambodia and they are brothers and sisters, man, they are blood. Given our job, we have the capability to also provide a home for someone but it’s selfish too because the reward has been extraordinary.

What does acting mean to you today?

I enjoy the craft of it more than ever. I’m much more experienced now and I have a process and what I find interesting is I can get to it quicker and cut out the cacophony that sometimes comes with a character or film or production that don’t really matter. It means more to me now that my kids are going to see my films because I want to do them proud and there are a few I feel I have to make up for!

Growing up was there a movie that really inspired you or made you want to act?

Don’t laugh but strangely enough I loved Saturday Night Fever! It wasn’t the bad suits and the dancing - although I can do the Hustle! - but it was the idea that I didn’t know people could live like that. I’d only seen my corner of the world, which was Oklahoma and Missouri, so that intrigued me. But I always loved films my whole life and I remember seeing Butch and Sundance when I was in kindergarten!

Do you think your passion for architecture and helping people will take from your acting career one day? Where do you see yourself in 25 years?

I wouldn’t even begin to know what will happen in the future. I look at the changes I’ve gone through in the past ten years and I couldn’t imagine any of them. I like the balance of all of it right now but probably by then I’ll be gone from this world of acting. I want to get all the kids to 18 and then I’ll reevaluate!

What can you tell us about your next film, Inglorious Bastards, directed by Quentin Tarantino?

It is outrageous! It’s the World War II film to end all World War II films and I don’t know how they’ll do another one after this! Quentin has such a love for film and the craft, it’s like being in his church on set, so it’s been a lovely experience.