Courtney Love Claims Brad Pitt Got Her Fired From Fight Club After Rejecting His Kurt Cobain Biopic Pitch
Courtney Love was this close to starring in Fight Club — if it weren't for Brad Pitt.
Speaking to Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, the Hole frontwoman claimed David Fincher hired her to star alongside Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in 1999’s Fight Club. Her role was Marla, the love interest of Norton’s narrator and protagonist.
But she was booted out at the eleventh hour and the part eventually went to Helena Bonham Carter.
Love believed her firing had something to do with Pitt after rejecting the latter’s pitch for a biopic of Kurt Cobain, Love’s husband and Nirvana singer who died by suicide in 1994.
“I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt. I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the f*** do you think are?” Love said.
She recalled telling Pitt in a meeting, “I don’t know if I trust you and I don’t know that your movies are for profit. They’re really good social justice movies, but… if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”
And it was Norton, who was then dating Love, who broke the news to her. “He starts sobbing,” she said. “And he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!”.
Soon after, Fincher delivered the bad news to Love as well.
But Love’s version should be taken with a pinch of salt.
A source close to Fight Club said (via Variety and Billboard) Love did audition for the movie (as did the likes of Janeane Garofalo and Winona Ryder) but was never offered the part. That person added, “You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get. It’s common knowledge that roles are not decided by other actors but by the director.”
Pitt never got to make that Kurt Cobain biopic but Gus Van Sant did, kind of, sort of. He directed 2005’s Last Days, which looks at the final days of a troubled Seattle musician loosely inspired by Cobain; Love wasn’t involved in that production.
Pitt will next be seen in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, in cinemas Jan 19. Van Sant’s Last Days is available on HBO Go; Fight Club is streaming on Disney+.
Photos: TPG News/Click Photos
