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Brad Pitt has detailed his struggle with a rare “face blindness” – and admitted that “no one believes” him when he talks about it.
The 58-year-old actor believes he suffers from prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces that usually affects the person for most or all of their lives.
Many people with this condition cannot even recognize family members, partners, or friends and Cope with this by using other ways to recognize people, such as:
Struggles: Brad Pitt has detailed his struggle with a rare “face blindness” – and admitted that “no one believes” him when he talks about it
Though Brad hasn’t been officially diagnosed with the condition, he’s long believed he was a sufferer and admitted he worries it will cause people to think he’s aloof or aloof around people .
He told GQ magazine: “No one believes me! I want to meet someone else [person with the prosopagnosia].’
Brad previously opened up about his battle with the disease in 2013, telling Esquire: “So many people hate me because they think I don’t respect them.
“Every once in a while someone gives me context and I’m like, ‘Thanks for helping me.’ But I p** off more people.’
Aloof: Brad (pictured in 2016) has long believed he was a sufferer and admitted he worries it will cause people to think he is aloof or distant towards people
He continued, “You get that thing like, ‘You’re selfish. You’re conceited.” But it’s a mystery to me, man.
“I can’t capture a face, and yet I come from such a creative-aesthetic point of view. I’ll have it tested.’
A 2017 study found that children who were underweight at birth are worse at recognizing faces as they get older.
Researchers believe that low birth weight is associated with developmental impairments in parts of the brain, including areas that deal with visual information.
About 2.5 per cent of the population is thought to be affected to some degree, including comedian Stephen Fry and former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who have admitted to suffering from face blindness.
Elsewhere in his GQ interview, Brad offered a somber assessment of the human condition as he moves on after the collapse of his five-year marriage to actress Angelina Jolie.
The Hollywood star embraced a life of abstinence that began shortly after their divorce began in 2016, and explained that his newfound positivity is tempered by a belief that we all experience painful heartbreak at some point in our lives.
“I think all of our hearts are broken,” he said. “I’ve always felt very alone in my life, growing up alone as a kid, alone out here, and only recently have I had a bigger hug with my friends and family.
“What is that line, it was either Rilke or Einstein, believe it or not, but it was about if you can walk with the paradox, if you’re carrying real pain and real joy at the same time, that’s maturity, that is growth.”
Despite the prevailing sense of isolation, he admitted he found community and friendship through his decision to give up alcohol in 2016.
The newly divorced actor spent 18 months attending regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings while embracing the group’s core principles of abstinence from all mind-altering substances.
“I had a really cool men’s group here that was very private and selective, so it was safe,” he explained. “Because I’ve seen things of other people being taped pouring out their guts and it’s just horrifying to me.”
Exes: Elsewhere in his GQ interview, Brad offered a somber assessment of the human condition as he moves on after the collapse of his five-year marriage to actress Angelina Jolie (pictured in 2007).
Brad, a lifelong smoker, also made the decision to eliminate cigarettes from his life, opting instead to replace tobacco with nicotine-flavored gum.
“I don’t have the ability to do just one or two a day,” he said of his past smoking habit. “It’s not in my condition. I’m all in. And I’ll drive into the ground. I lost my privileges.”
However, a sense of impending doom is ever-present, and Pitt admits he is frequently tormented by the same recurring dream in which he is brutally stabbed.
“For a solid four or five years there, the predominant dream I would experience was getting jumped on and stabbed,” he explained in an email to GQ.
“And I would wake up terrified. I didn’t understand why they wanted to hurt me. It didn’t stop until a year or two ago when I started going straight back into the dream and just asking why?’
