text: Before settling in to discuss The Curious Case of Benjamin Button­—his new film about a man who, thanks to the magic of Hollywood makeup and computer-generated effects, ages backward—Pitt orders a large pot of coffee ("I'm in the penthouse, I think," he tells the room service operator). When it arrives, he pours himself a cup and is ready to talk. In a jocular mood, Pitt says that while Benjamin Button has been on the "periphery" of his attention for almost a decade, he hesitated to commit for years in part because the role required latex jowls and bald caps. "I had sworn off all prosthetics—really," he says with a laugh, joking that earlier experiences with glue-on beards (think Legends of the Fall) taught him to insert a "quality of life" clause banning elaborate makeup into his contract. "Life is too short."
  It's a deft summary of Pitt's two-decade career. As an actor, he's blessed with an unusual physical agility—there's no one whose moves the camera loves more—and he's likewise proved to be exceptionally adept at navigating the challenges of his public life. Pitt has developed a protean fame that encompasses hits and misses (1998's Meet Joe Black), wealth and kudos, love and divorce. At present, he may be at his apogee, thanks in no small part to his relationship with Jolie. At the time of Thelma & Louise, Pitt's appeal boiled down to washboard abs and a tan. Now he's famous as a family man and known for his cultured knowledge of architecture and, more recently, contemporary art. He and Jolie have also successfully spun the crass commercial potential of their earlier notoriety into public goodwill, as when they sold baby pictures of their twins for $14 million and funneled the money into charity projects around the globe. Perhaps even more surprising is that Pitt­—along with Jolie and his friends George Clooney and Edward Norton, and following in the footsteps of Paul Newman and Robert Redford­—has created a paradigm of Hollywood stardom that turns from self-indulgence toward good works.