Brad Pitt's Sci-Fi Role In 12 Monkeys Left Him Struggling To Move

Terry Gilliam's 1995 film "12 Monkeys" is a time travel story that was extrapolated from Chris Marker's celebrated 1962 short film "La Jetée," only expanded to fit into 129 minutes. In "12 Monkeys," Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a man trapped in the hellscape of the year 2035. Years before, a virus wiped out most of humankind, forcing the survivors into chasms underground. James is selected to go back in time to uncover information about the impending virus, hoping to find a cure.

Cole, however, is dizzy and disconnected when he travels through time to the year 1990. His confusing stories about coming from the future leave those in the present suspecting that he's mentally ill. Cole is committed to a mental asylum, doped up on drugs, and concerned about the future of his mission. While in the asylum, Cole meets an inmate named Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a twitchy, paranoid chatterbox who raves about vast government conspiracies. Goines, it turns out, it also a major player in the Army of the 12 Monkeys, an ecoterrorist group that might be the source of the virus.

Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Goines, which was eye-opening for many filmgoers. Pitt had already given great performances in films like "Kalifornia," "Legends of the Fall," and "Interview with the Vampire," but was largely dismissed as a prettyboy. In "12 Monkeys," he was wild-eyed and dangerous, a new note for the actor.

In 2021, Gilliam and production designer Brad Jeffrey Beecroft recalled working with Pitt in a retrospective with The Hollywood Reporter, and they recalled how dedicated he was. Indeed, he poured so much into the physical part of his performance that he could barely move the following day.

Pitt's dedication to playing Jeffrey Goines had the actor pushing himself into extra rehearsals. Pitt would run lines by himself, sometimes at odd hours of the day, startling members of the crew. It was especially scary given that the hospital scenes in "12 Monkeys" were shot at the now-shuttered Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, a spooky prison said to be haunted. Beecroft remembered a particular moment late at night, wandering the empty halls of the closed prison and running into Pitt, in character, working himself into a wild frenzy:

"I was working in the prison one night, late. That prison is thought to be haunted. Al Capone was there. It has trees growing in the halls because it has been abandoned for so long. Brad comes walking in. He started running his lines in this abandoned asylum at 10 o'clock at night. He was trying to be Jeffrey Goines and speak as fast as he could and get that insanity there." 

It's not unusual for actors to visit the set and run lines, although it was creepy, given the setting. 

Gilliam, meanwhile, was very impressed with Pitt's work. Indeed, because Pitt was so energetic and Willis so laconic, Pitt handily waltzed away with every scene he was in. Gilliam recalled, however, that it would take a toll on the actor. He poured so much into his performance on the first day that he ended up running out of juice:

"Brad was stealing all the scenes. Brad is out there firing on all cylinders. Brad had worked so hard that on his first day of shooting he pulled out all the stops and by the end of the day he could barely move. He was so drained. It was great to see it." 

His efforts did not go unnoticed.

Gilliam wanted Pitt involved with "12 Monkeys" merely for his talent and was only secondarily concerned with his star power. He knew that Pitt had to talk more quickly playing Goines than he had ever spoken before, which required aid from a speech coach. Gilliam also asked the same coach to oversee one of his lead actors on "The Fisher King." Pitt, Gilliam was pleased to see, threw himself into the coaching, wanting to nail his performance.

By a lucky coincidence, one of Pitt's bigger hit films was released in theaters while he was filming in Philadelphia, which meant Gilliam suddenly had to worry about paparazzi on set in addition to his actors' performances. As the filmmaker recalled:

"I put [Pitt] with a guy named Stephen Bridgewater, who had worked with Jeff Bridges on 'Fisher King.' He was getting Jeff to be a motormouth DJ and that's what Brad needed because he had never spoken that quickly. Stephen really got Brad working his ass off. With Brad, I could spend time walking around on the streets before we started shooting. People didn't necessarily recognize him. And then 'Legends of the Fall' opened on the first weekend of the shoot. And bang! The world had changed. We had to have so many security people around because he had become the hottest thing on the planet."

Pitt was nominated for an Oscar for "12 Monkeys," and would later be nominated for his performances in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Moneyball." He would finally win an Academy Award for acting in 2020 thanks to his performance in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood." Perhaps ironically, he speaks very slowly in that film.