Despite his leading man looks and movie star charisma, actor Brad Pitt spent most of his career trying to avoid bloated box office roles, in favor of riskier, lower profile work. After achieving heartthrob status with revealing performances showing off his six-pack abs in “Thelma and Louise” (1991) and “Legends of the Fall” (1994), Pitt actively subverted his hunky image by taking on ugly and often crazed characters – most notably in “12 Monkeys” (1995), “Fight Club” (1999) and “Snatch” (2001). While en route to becoming one of the top box office draws of his generation, Pitt generated a substantial amount of tabloid press – particularly for his headline-grabbing romantic entanglements, which provided ample fodder for supermarket stands across the country. His high profile marriage to Jennifer Aniston – once tagged as the perfect storybook Hollywood romance between the boy and girl next door – publicly imploded after he separated from his wife and began dating proverbial bad girl, Angelina Jolie. The result, however, was a new image of Pitt as multi-racial father and globetrotting activist – thanks to Jolie’s adoption of impoverished orphans from Africa and Southeast Asia – a transformation that was underscored by a strong and mature performance in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s meditative “Babel” (2006), for which the actor earned his second Golden Globe nomination.