Newsweek sat down with six of the actors on most everyone’s Oscar shortlist for their 13th annual Oscar Roundtable.

This year’s panel includes Brad Pitt (”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), Anne Hathaway (”Rachel Getting Married”), Robert Downey Jr. (”Tropic Thunder”), Mickey Rourke (”The Wrestler”), Frank Langella (”Frost/Nixon”) and Sally Hawkins (”Happy-Go-Lucky”).

Here are a collection of videos and an excerpt of the interview which will be featured in the next issue of Newsweek.

NEWSWEEK: With the Internet, it’s becoming harder for actors to draw the line between public and private. Do any of you guys ever Google yourself?
Pitt: Dear God. No.

Never?
Pitt: Never. First of all, I don’t really know how to operate a computer.

Do you have a BlackBerry?
Pitt: Oh yeah, I have a BlackBerry.

Anne, what about you. Do you Google yourself?
Hathaway: No.

Langella: It’s not a good idea. It can be painful and it can be self-aggrandizing.

Hawkins: What do they say about don’t believe any of it?

Downey: Oh, I love all that s—-, personally. Sorry. I love just it. Because it’s a hoot. Some people overstate their support, like they know you. Other people are busy doing something else and just want to go on this chat site and say some despicable character assassination, which I honestly think they kind of nailed it. I do have that shortcoming. It’s really fun.

Pitt: This publicity machine is out of control. It’s everything we didn’t sign up for. There’s this whole other entity that you get sucked into. You have to go and sell your wares. It’s something I never made my peace with. Somehow you’re not supporting your film if you don’t get out on a show and talk about your personal life. It has nothing to do with why I do this.

Langella: I’m a dinosaur. I never had a publicist until this film, because I had to protect myself—the studio wanted me to do every interview and talk show. I think the greatest thing an actor has is mystery and danger. And you poor guys are being asked to give pieces of yourself. You must fight it every chance you get. The more they know about you personally, the less they believe in you on camera. You want to disappear.

Pitt: But I think it’s impossible to operate fully from that standpoint. David Fincher [director of "Benjamin Button"] has spent five years chiseling away at this thing. I want him to get his day. So there is a strange push and pull.

(more…)

Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hit the red carpet for the German premiere of Pitt’s latest film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

Photos: www.bauergriffin.com/www.bauergriffinonline.com

In news that isn’t really news, Craig Rudin, some guy who worked at a head shop that Brad Pitt used to frequent, is coming forward saying that the actor was a well known pot smoker.

Duh! This isn’t anything shocking. In fact, it’s recycled news! Everyone knows Brad liked his herb back in the day.

Anyhow, Rudin, a marijuana advocate who is running for the mayor of L.A., says,

“It was no secret Brad liked to smoke pot. He was so open and honest about it. It seemed to me all he wanted to do was smoke weed, make movies and go to the beach. He’d come into the shop all the time. He came in once and was excited about smoking with one of his very big-name co-stars. ‘We blaze (smoke pot)every day in his trailer.’ He had a huge grin on his face.”

Brad no longer admits to smoking weed, but you can bet he and Clooney enjoy a fattie every now and then.

Ok, is there anyone out there who really does not like Brad Pitt?

I doubt it.

He really is a very likable guy when you hear him in interviews, he has a genuine smile and undeniable charisma. And hey, I am kinda diggin’ that mustache if ya know what I mean.

Like many, I would have to say my favorite Brad Pitt movie character is Tyler Durden of Fight Club. In fact, every time I watch it I am reminded of how damn sexy this man can be – as much as I don’t want him to be. The Sexiest Men of the Year as named by People magazine are generally not my type.

Heh.

Pitt does a great interview in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone and here’s an excerpt – but go and get the magazine on Friday to read it in it’s entirety.

Rolling Stone: Benjamin Button is your third film with Fincher. Going back to Fight Club, though, I found a quote where he talks about how you’re actually sort of similar to your character, Tyler Durden.

Pitt: In that I don’t bathe?

He didn’t mention that specifically. He said, “It’s probably a character closer to Brad in real life than most people would be comfortable knowing.”

[Pitt laughs]

“There is a childlike sense of anarchy….He is kind of a shit-stirrer and one of those people who is ‘Huh? Is that the current thinking? I don’t really buy that.’”

Well, that probably comes from growing up in a religious community. I just found it so stifling, my religion. I know it’s very comforting for other people.

Did you go to church every Sunday?

Yeah. And it was too much of what you shouldn’t be doing instead of what you could be doing. I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives. It drives me mental. This Prop. 8 thing just drives me mental.

Where were you on election night?

Chicago. I went down to Grant Park, because I was doing Oprah the next day. I walked home from the park to the hotel, which was a half-hour walk. And I could walk freely — no one was interested in me at that point. People were weeping and hugging. The sense of elation in the streets — it was great. That was such a turnaround for us. We captured the original definition of America again.

Do you think Fight Club could have been made after September 11th?

No. Certainly not that ending. We debated it then. There’s a line we stuck in, about the buildings being evacuated.

Some critics just didn’t get that film.

Did you see the DVD that Fincher put out? He put all the negative reviews in the booklet. Some London critic said, “Not only is it anti-capitalistic, but it’s anti-society and anti-God.” We were like, “We didn’t realize it was that good!”

Benjamin Button and Fight Club actually deal with similar themes: having a finite amount of time in life, and what we should do with it.

But they come to such radically different conclusions. In Fight Club, the response to mortality is nihilism, anarchy —
[Laughs] That was a Nineties conclusion. Now we have an Aughts conclusion. I actually never thought of what you just said. But it’s probably true.

It’s just, Benjamin Button feels very positive, but you could easily come away from that story feeling very bleak.

Yeah, I think it’s open to . . . it’s your choice. I find Benjamin is about those universal things we all share — that 95 percent that makes us all the same, wherever we are in the world. Our loves, our hopes, but also the loss that we all walk around with and hide very well, and the ultimate notion that we’re all expendable. To me, it’s a counterstatement to this divisive period we’ve been in, where we focused on the two, three, four, five percent of ways in which we’re different.

[Read the full story in RS Issue 1068-69, on stands December 12, 2008.]

If you happened to be a teenager in the 80s, you will definitely remember ‘21 Jump Street’, starring uber hunk Johnny Depp.

His face was splashed all over Tiger Beat, and girls like me had posters of him in our rooms. He was hot, even then.

As for Brad Pitt, I had no clue who he was at the time, but he was climbing his way up the Hollywood ladder, about to become one of the most famous (and sexiest) celebrities in the world. Who knew he starred in an episode of ‘21 Jump Street’? Not me! Not until I came across this clip, that is.

It’s so funny to look back at shows and photos from the 80s. I don’t remember everyone looking so damned goofy. But we sure as hell did, didn’t we?

This clip is full of mullets, bomber jackets, cotton blazers with loud prints, and Brad looks a little bit like Ellen Degeneres with that hairdo, wouldn’t you say?

In Star magazine’s latest issue, the gossip rag claims that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are furious with Jennifer Aniston’s recent Vogue interview.

Aniston was quoted as saying Angelina was “not cool” for saying she and Pitt fell in love on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while he was still married.

This particular cover strikes me as funny, and makes me envision the way the Pitt/Aniston phone call would go…

PITT: “Shuddup, Jen!”

ANISTON: “Brad, you’re not the boss of me!”

PITT: “Yeah huh! Am too!”

Anyhow, Star mag goes on to speculate that the real reason the couple split is that Jen didn’t trust Brad after a particular incident involving a beautiful party planner in 2003.

In late 2003 — before Brad started filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Angie — Brad left Jen behind while he went to a Vanity Fair party in Los Feliz, Calif. But he wasn’t alone for long. A source tells Star that Brad began chatting up a very sexy party planner, and then the two disappeared together. In fact, Jen’s best friend, Courteney Cox, even sent her husband, David Arquette, to look for Brad. When Brad finally came back to the party, “everyone was whispering about what had gone on between him and that girl.”

It was whispers like this that made Jen rethink starting a family with Brad, even though he was really pushing for it. “She held off on having kids because she wanted to wait until she was sure Brad wasn’t being unfaithful,” says the source. “But she could never regain that trust, and she just didn’t want to bring a child into that mess.”

I always did think that the absence of children in this couple’s relationship was what caused the split, but who knows? Maybe Pitt was gettin’ a little nookie on the side. He is only known as the sexiest guy in the world..

The real Hollywood mystery is no biological children between Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. They said for years that they couldn’t have children, so they adopted.

Then they split and both have (supposed) natural born babies almost immediately with their new spouses.

Am I missing something here?

Jennifer Aniston finally opens up about her feelings on archrival Angelina Jolie, the woman who stole her husband of four years, Brad Pitt.

Jen graces the December issue of Vogue and dishes in an exclusive interview, finally talking about her feeling toward Angie.

Angelina and Brad met while filming the movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but have long denied that they had an affair while Aniston and Pitt were married. But Angie was recently quoted as saying she and Brad fell in love on the set of the film, leading to much speculation as to when the romance started.

Jen has never gone public about how she feels about Angie, but in the upcoming interview she finally lets loose.

She tells the magazine,

“There was stuff printed there that was definitely from a time when I was unaware that it was happening. I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool.”

You have to hand it to her. You can bet she has wanted to scream, rant and rave about Jolie’s man stealing (and denial of it) for ages now. How many women do you know who could keep quiet about it for that long?

And then there’s Angie, Hollywood’s Mother Teresa, who despite vowing for years to never steal a woman’s husband – because her father cheated on her mother – did exactly that. Not only did she do it, she denied doing it. And still denies it, even though we all know better.

Jen goes on in the interview to also discuss personal portions of her life such as the odd relationship with her parents, her new Beverly Hills home, and even a few tidbits on her love life.

Jen’s photo shoot is super chic, it was shot on Malibu Beach, and she is stunning in designer swimwear.