Pitt dug up his French estate in ‘fool’s gold’ obsession

‘Maybe it has to do with where I grew up … in the Ozarks there were always stories of hidden gold’

BRAD PITT has revealed that he spent a year digging up the grounds of his French chateau after falling for a story that it was the site of buried gold.

The Hollywood star was approached by a man who said the estate in southeastern France could hide millions of dollars worth of treasure its medieval owner had taken during the Crusades.

Pitt said that prompted him to buy radar equipment and begin scouring his estate. “I got obsessed,” he told GQ magazine. “Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all.

“Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up, because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.”

Pitt said he later learnt that the man who approached him was promoting a radar company, and added he felt “pretty foolish in the end. It was just the hunt that was exciting”.

Pitt signed a lease for the 1,200-acre Chateau Miraval with Angelina Jolie in 2008 and bought it in 2012. The couple married there in 2014, only for Jolie to file for divorce two years later.

In addition to a vineyard that produces rosé, the property has a private lake, olive groves, a moat and a helicopter pad. It is now at the centre of a legal battle in which Pitt is suing Jolie.

He accuses his former wife of secretly selling her share of the estate’s vineyard to a Russian oligarch. In a lawsuit filed earlier this year in Los Angeles, he claimed that the couple had an agreement neither would sell their share without the other’s approval.

Pitt told GQ that until a year ago he was plagued by a recurring dream of being stabbed, which he put down to feeling lonely.

He added: “I think joy has been a newer discovery, later in life. I think I spent years with a low-grade depression, and it’s not until coming to terms with that… that I’ve been able to catch those moments of joy.”

In the interview, Pitt, 58, also said he had reached the final stages of his career. “I consider myself on my last leg, this last semester or trimester,” he said. Although he will continue to act – his new thriller, Bullet Train, is released next month – he intends to focus on his production company.

He has also made changes to his lifestyle, giving up alcohol in 2016 and quitting smoking during lockdown.

The July/ August issue of British GQ is available via digital download and on newsstands on Tuesday.