Before Matt Damon had to fight his way home from the Trojan War in Christopher Nolan‘sThe Odyssey, Brad Pitt was in 2004’s Greek epic Troy.
The blockbuster took the well-known story of Greek Gods and Trojan horses and turned it into an epic in the vein of Ben Hur and Gladiator. But, the experience forced the lead actor to reassess his career choices.
Pitt played Achilles in the star-studded movie, which also starred Eric Bana, Diane Kruger, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Rose Byrne and the late Peter O’Toole. But the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star didn’t choose to make the film, he was contractually obliged to by Warner Bros.
“[Troy] really made me think, I’m following my gut from here on out. I had to do Troy because — I guess I can say all this now — I pulled out of another movie and then had to do something for the studio,” he told The New York Times in 2019. “So I was put in Troy. It wasn’t painful, but I realized that the way that movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it.”
Pitt admitted working onFight Clubwith David Fincher had “spoiled” him and that Troy was far too concerned with being “commercial.”
“Every shot was like, Here’s the hero! There was no mystery. So about that time I made a decision that I was only going to invest in quality stories, for lack of a better term. It was a distinct shift that led to the next decade of films,” Pitt revealed about the film loosely based on Homer’s Iliad.
The actor was so dissatisfied he made a point of altering his strategy so that he was “only going to invest in quality stories, for lack of a better term.”
He is not the only actor who has little love for Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 historical epic. Orlando Bloom admitted during an interview for Variety’s Know Their Lines video series that he has mostly blocked the movie out of his mind.
“Oh my god, Troy. Wow. I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain by the way,” Bloom said. “So many people love that movie, but for me playing that character was just like [slits throat]. Am I allowed to say all of these things? I didn’t want to do the movie. I didn’t want to play this character.”
While the Pirates of the Caribbean actor said the movie was “great” he felt his character, Paris, was “completely against everything I felt in my being.”
“At one point it says Paris crawls along the floor having been beaten by somebody and holds his brother’s leg. I was like, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ One of my agents at the time said, ‘But that’s the moment that will make it!’ And I completely fell for that line of a agent. I think that’s why I blanked that from my mind,” the British actor explained.
This story was originally published by Parade on Jul 26, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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