Brad Pitt Covers 'Sports Illustrated'

Brad Pitt sports an Oakland A’s cap on the September 26 issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday.

Here’s what the 47-year-old actor, who stars in the upcoming movie Moneyball, shared with senior writer Austin Murphy:

On getting the SI cover: “I was just happy to do Sports Illustrated. To do something other than the fashion-y things, for something I respect, is much more fun.”

On his background in baseball: “It’s shameful how little I know about baseball…. I’m amazed they let me do this movie…. Baseball and I didn’t get along that well. I wrestled one year [in high school]. I dove one year. Everything but baseball.”

On what initially drew Brad to the Moneyball story: “I’m a sucker for the underdog story.”

On the end goal of the film: “What we were trying to do is tell an unconventional story in the Trojan horse of a conventional baseball movie.”

On the comparisons between Moneyball and three of his favorite ’70s films (The French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, All the President’s Men): “In scripts today, someone has a big epiphany, learns a lesson, then comes out the other side different. In these older films I’m talking about, the beast at the end of the movie was the same beast in the beginning of the movie. What changed was the world around them, by just a couple of degrees. Nothing monumental. I think that’s true about us. We fine‑tune ourselves, but big change is not real.”

Moneyball opens everywhere on Friday, September 23.