With looks that have inspired countless People magazine covers, Internet shrines, and record estrogen surges, Brad Pitt is an actor whose very name inspires more drooling platitudes about male beauty than it does about acting. Following his breakthrough as the wickedly charming drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind in (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-aged 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 tumbleweed.

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 1997, 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. Following Tibet, Pitt traveled in a less inflammatory direction with Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own, in which he starred with fellow screen icon Harrison Ford. Despite this seemingly faultless pairing, the film was a relative critical and box office failure. In 1998, Pitt tried his hand at romantic drama, portraying Death in Meet Joe Black, the most expensive non-special effects film ever made. The film, which weighed in at three hours in length, met with excessively mixed reviews, although more than one critic remarked that Pitt certainly made a very appealing representative of the afterlife.