Brad Pitt has explained why he and partner Angelina Jolie sold pictures of their then-newborn twins to People Magazine for $14 million, which they put into their charitable foundation: ‘I know some of these guys who are in that ‘stalkerazzi’ world, and you really have to separate them from the paparazzi in our industry. That’s another breed. They have their heroes who got the big, scandalous shot, which just promotes more of that, It’s a very strange thing to be selling photos of something that’s very intimate and personal. And those of which you want to protect. We have to plan an escape every day just to get out of the house; kind of a Mission Impossible with decoys, and that’s the life we live in, and that’s the one we asked for. But we knew there was a bounty on our head … and we know the lengths they go to to get that shot. So we figured, ‘Let’s cut it off in the beginning,’ and instead of that money going to people I do not respect, we would make some good out of it.’ They need a set of decoys and red herring/ circuitous travel plans in order to leave their house every day? Yeah, sounds about right. Johnny Depp spoke about how Pitt and Jolie were followed in his Vanity Fair January 2011 interview, promoting The Tourist, ‘Poor [Angelina], dogged by paparazzi; her and Brad…all their kids. There are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it is, you know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi… [She and I had] to hide, sometimes not even being able to talk to each other in public because someone will take a photograph and it will be misconstrued and turned into some other s**t.’
35 photos of Brad Pitt, in blue, at the California Moneyball premiere September 19; in black, with Angelina Jolie, at the TIFF Moneyball premiere September 9.
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