Brad Pitt: 5 More Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Jeffrey Goines - Twelve Monkeys

Another movie which saw Brad Pitt on fine, over the top form, came some time before Inglourious Basterds - released in 1995 it marks the era in which the actor truly started to emerge as a potentially formidable acting force, taking on stronger and stronger roles which moved away from what he described as his "pretty boy" phase. Few directors crank up the weirdness quite like Terry Gilliam and his movie 12 Monkeys not only established a unique, high concept but also managed to tie them up into a plot which twisted and turned right up to the final reel. Brad Pitt's supporting role as Jeffrey Goines, the radical, mentally unbalanced son of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, is pivotal to the red herring which guides the audience through the film. We first meet him in a mental asylum where Gilliam's Dutch angle widescreen framing brought Pitt's paranoid, unhinged ramblings to the fore. As founder of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys his character subtly changes, the hints of insanity bubbling away beneath a barely controlled surface. "Doing the mad thing" is something that most actors try their hands at at some time or another in their career, and Brad Pitt as Goines in 12 Monkeys is certainly a memorable portrayal of a man in turmoil with his identity, values and purpose in life.