In 2011, Hollywood star Brad Pitt had visited India with Angelina Jolie during the shooting of ‘A Mighty Heart’. Directed by Michael Winterbottom, A Mighty Heart tells the frightening story of murdered US Journalist Daniel Pearl. The 2002 kidnapping and murder of the American journalist in Pakistan is depicted from the perspective of his widow, French-born journalist Mariane Pearl, in the powerful film, which also starred late Bollywood icon, Irrfan Khan, and Dan Futterman.
In 2012, while promoting his film Killing Them Softly, Pitt spoke about his quick trip with his then-wife Jolie. He told DNA, “On my last visit, I got to see a lot of India. There is no place like it. And it’s so diverse — both the South and the North, that one cannot get to see all of it in a couple of weeks. But I found Varanasi absolutely staggering. I have never seen anything like it before. The city just spills into the river Ganges. It’s a holy place where people go to die. It’s really, really extraordinary.”
Pitt also filmed a sequence for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in Varanasi, India. He once again visited the country in 2017 to promote his film War Machine, which released on Netflix. The event was also attended by Shah Rukh Khan. At the time, Pitt had said that he would never be able to do a Bollywood film as he didn’t know how to dance. “I’d never make it in Bollywood because I can’t dance,” he had said. To which, Shah Rukh had quipped, “No, we’ll make you dance in Bollywood. We make everyone dance in Bollywood (laughs).” Pitt hilariously responded, saying, “I think it’ll be the first film and the last.”
