When ‘Troy’ hit theaters in the summer of 2004, it looked like a total win. Wolfgang Petersen‘s sword and sandal epic pulled in over $497 million worldwide, landing it at #60 among the top box office hits of all time and making it the 8th highest grossing film of that year. Brad Pitt, playing the demigod warrior Achilles, was the face of a movie that made more than 73% of its money outside the US. By any commercial standard, it was a hit.
But years later, Pitt admitted the film never really sat right with him. And the reasons had less to do with money and more to do with how he ended up in it in the first place.
Why Brad Pitt Almost Didn’t Star in ‘Troy’
Talking to The New York Times in 2019, Pitt said ‘Troy‘ wasn’t something he set out to do. It was more of a backup plan. “I had to do ‘Troy’ because, I guess I can say all this now, I pulled out of another movie and then had to do something for the studio. So I was put in ‘Troy,’” he said.
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That other movie was a Coen brothers project he really wanted to make. “There was this defining film I never got to do, a Coen Brothers film called ‘To the White Sea.’ We had an opportunity to go, and then it was shut down,” Pitt explained. On the advice of people around him pushing safer commercial choices, he ended up playing Achilles instead.
Brad Pitt on Playing Achilles
Pitt’s issue wasn’t just how he landed the role, it was how the movie was made around him. He told the Times that constantly being framed as the hero of every scene started to wear on him. “It wasn’t painful, but I realised that the way the movie was being told was not how I wanted it to be. I made my own mistakes in it,” he said, before adding the line that’s become the most repeated part of his ‘Troy‘ comments. “I could not get out of the middle of the frame. It was driving me crazy. Every shot was like, here’s the hero!“
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For an actor who built his name playing odd, morally messy characters, being turned into a polished, camera-hogging leading man felt off, even while audiences were showing up in droves to watch exactly that.
How ‘Troy’ Became a Career Turning Point for Brad Pitt
What stands out about Pitt’s story is that he doesn’t just call ‘Troy‘ a bad experience. He calls it the moment that changed how he picked roles going forward. “It was really a turn on ‘Troy.’ I was disappointed in it. When you’re trying to figure things out in your career, you get a lot of advice. People are telling you that you should be doing this, and other people are saying you should be doing that,” he said.
After ‘Troy,‘ Pitt started seeking out directors with stronger, more personal styles, a shift that eventually led him to films like ‘Ad Astra‘ and later another strong stretch of acclaimed work. Pitt has said his frustration with ‘Troy‘ is part of what pushed him to chase better films from then on.
‘Troy’ Box Office Success vs. Critical Reviews
There’s a real irony in Pitt’s dissatisfaction. Critics weren’t exactly won over by ‘Troy‘ either. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a middling 53%, describing it as a big, muscular spectacle that never quite connects emotionally. Yet audiences around the world still turned out, pulled in by the scale, the mythology, and Pitt’s own star power. The same constant focus on Achilles that bothered Pitt on set may be exactly what sold tickets in Seoul, Berlin, and São Paulo.
Two decades later, ‘Troy‘ is still a box office success story on paper. But for Pitt, it’s remembered less as a triumph and more as the wrong turn that, oddly enough, ended up putting him on the right path.
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