Hot Actor: Brad Pitt

Pitt sits at the kitchen table, filling the frequent pauses in the telling of his Midwestern-boy-makes-good-in-Hollywood saga by restlessly changing the CD playing in a nearby boombox. "Here's another cliché," Pitt says. "I was in an acting class. A girl in the class needed a scene partner for an audition for an agent. So I was the scene partner for the audition, and I ended up getting signed." The dogs' paws click on the kitchen floor as they stampede through, and housemate Simmons brings over a plate of pancakes.

"This is the guy who's got the story," Pitt says. Simmons, on a break from college, was traveling through Montana last summer when he saw an ad looking for a fly-fisherman who could act. Simmons auditioned along with hundreds of Montanans and landed a speaking role in A River Runs Through It. Since then, Pitt and Simmons have been hanging out a lot, and now Simmons is in Hollywood, trying to make it in acting, too. "Right place at the right time," says Simmons, bringing over a plate of fried eggs.

The three dogs — Deacon, Earl and Maggie — charge back through the kitchen, growling and sniffing at each other. "Look at these dogs," says Simmons.

"Yesterday, Deacon had to wear the Shoe of Shame," Pitt says. He caught Deacon chewing one of his shoes out in the yard, so he tied the high top around his neck. "He was completely humiliated in front of his buddies."

"All the other dogs were like —" Simmons says.

" 'We don't want to hang out with this guy,' " Pitt says.

"So he goes and hides in a room till we took it off," Simmons says.

"Now Earl here," Pitt says, "his tail is exactly at coffee-table level. Everything you leave on the table gets knocked off."

"Earl's got no legs, but he's got a big ol' head — " Simmons says.

"A short man's complex," Pitt says.

"— an' a big ol' dingo, but he's got no legs," Simmons says.

"And he's lost his manhood," Pitt says. "He sniffs Deacon and goes, 'I used to have those.' Deacon hangs his pride in front of Earl and makes him feel bad. Maggie could care less."

You get the feeling that Pitt and Simmons could talk like this for hours about nearly anything. "That's what happens when you go for a long time without a TV," says Pitt.

Pitt's first "real job" was as "an idiot boyfriend who gets caught in the hay" on Dallas, a role that was followed by other bad-boy episodic-TV appearances, such as a guy who takes advantage of a girl on Growing Pains and motivates the moral of the final five minutes. In 1989 this trend toward male scalawaggery reached its villainous pinnacle in the role of a white-trash pimp-druggie named Billy in the tabloid-style NBC movie of the week Too Young to Die? Billy takes advantage of a young teenage runaway named Amanda (played by Juliette Lewis), hooking her on drugs, beating her and selling her for sex. In one typical scene, Billy slaps Amanda and snarls at her, "You run from me again, I'll kill you!" It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship — Pitt and Lewis have been involved ever since. "Yeah, it was quite romantic," Pitt says, deadpan, "shooting her full of drugs and stuff."

Pitt sounds a little awe-struck when he speaks of Lewis's talent. "She's got an amazing range," he says. "Real powerful." Although he and Lewis share a cutthroat profession, Pitt says there's little competition between them. "Our lives are not our work," he says. "Don't get me wrong — I'm not saying it's not difficult, 'cause your ego will slip in. But you can catch yourself and cut it off. You communicate. You say, 'Hey, I gotta tell you, I'm having this problem here.' It takes it all away." Lewis and Pitt's relationship seems to be on a firm footing: They've signed on to appear in the same movie, which in Hollywood is a sign of commitment that exceeds buying a couch together. In the movie, titled California and directed by Dom Sema, Pitt will play, surprisingly enough, a good-looking scoundrel.

Pitt says he was the third choice for the role in Thelma and Louise that would change his life. (The first choice for J.D., William Baldwin, left to star in Backdraft.) Pitt was called in by director Ridley Scott, read with Geena Davis ("It just sparked," Pitt says) and three days later was on the set with a cowboy hat on his head.

"Ridley would let us play around a lot," says Pitt. "He'd say, 'Okay, we got that one, now let's try something else.' And the final product was almost entirely based on the playing-around stuff." Even though Thelma and J.D. scatter a lot of little liquor bottles in the course of their torrid onscreen lovemaking, Pitt scoffs at the notion that there was anything truly bonerific about shooting the sex scene. "You're on the set," he says, "and it's like 'Cut! Come here — you got a zit on your butt.' And I'd be like 'Aw, gawd.' And you're standing there" — he stands with his hands on the kitchen counter, his backside sticking out — "and this makeup lady's going like this with a toothbrush" — he bends over and scrunches his face, dabbing meticulously with two fingers extended at the place where his butt used to be.

"It just makes me laugh," Pitt says. "It's the classic thing — you know, before a school picture you get a zit. That sums it all up for me. That's how sexual, romantic and passionate it is. I mean, how seriously can you take it all?"