The Truth About Brad Pitt And Jason Priestley's Time As Roommates
Before they were stars making hearts swoon across the land, Brad Pitt and Jason Priestley were just two out-of-work actors in Los Angeles looking to make ends meet; and to help pay the rent and pay the bills, they did what so many other young men and women do while trying to make it big — they became roommates.
Pitt would eventually, of course, go on to become a bona fide movie star, gracing the silver screen as well as the covers of tabloid magazines for decades, with headlines wondering if he'd reunite with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston or stay with second wife Angelina Jolie. (He ended up with neither of them, as of this writing.) Priestley, meanwhile, would get his big break with the Fox teen drama "Beverly Hills 90210," which he would star in for a decade (via IMDb).
But before all that success, Pitt and Priestley were just two bachelors sharing a pad. Needless to say, that pad may not have been ready for guests, as sometimes boys will be boys and boys can be quite messy.
They held some interesting competitions
When Jason Priestley published his memoir, aptly titled "Jason Priestley: A Memoir," in 2014, he described his time sharing a North Hollywood apartment with Brad Pitt, summing up the lives of two struggling young actors well. "We lived on Ramen noodles and generic beer — the kind that came in white cans labeled 'beer '— and Marlboro Light cigarettes ... We were broke" (via Interview Magazine).
There also seemed to be some hygiene issues and Priestley and Pitt decided to have some fun with the lack of said hygiene. "Just for fun, we used to have competitions over who could go the longest without showering and shaving. Brad always won. Having to go on an audition meant cleaning up, which is what usually put an end to the streak."
Eventually, those auditions paid off, but not for a while. By 1988, Pitt chose a new apartment and asked Priestley (and their third roommate, Bernie Coulson) to go with him, but Priestley chose to go his own way and move back to his native Vancouver for a short time until a Writer's Guild strike was over.
Pitt and Priestley part ways after making it big
After landing the role of JD in 1991's "Thelma and Louise," Brad Pitt's career took off, and with 1994's "Legends of the Fall" and "Interview With a Vampire," he became a genuine superstar in Hollywood (via IMDb). Jason Priestley, of course, became Brandon Walsh on the aforementioned "Beverly Hills, 90210," and he remained with the show for most of its run.
In his memoir, Priestley was both pragmatic and regretful about where his friendship with Pitt went. "Brad went off and was making movies all over the world, and I was sort of stuck in one place making a TV show, and it was back in the days before computers," Priestley wrote. "It kind of tore apart our whole group of friends that we had. The fact that the two of us went off and got strangely famous — we had a pretty good group of friends and all of a sudden we all sort of dissipated, and it was sad" (via Interview Magazine).