Raw talent. Integrity. Fear of fame. A troubled soul. Michael Pitt has lot in common with Kurt Cobain. But he can he resurrect him?

If Michael Pitt was asked to choose which Nirvana song best represented him, it might well be Come As You Are. It's mid-afternoon in Cannes, and Pitt is wearing tatty jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt, turned inside out so only the white stitching of a mysterious logo is visible. Around him buzz innumerable glamorous industry hangers-on, parading up and down the seafront while the mechanics of the world's glitziest film festival grind into action. Pitt however, is not one for ostentatious displays of wealth. And anyway, he isn't even that wealthy.

"I don't live in Hollywood," he says in a voice that sounds like he's permanently stoned. "I don't have a Lamborghini. My lifestyle hasn't really changed from when I was making $250 a week."

Sitting at a beach side hotel, cradling his pack of full-strength Marlboros, he has a sleepy look in his blue eyes. He may well have just crawled out of bed, or even torn himself away from last night's party. Although best known to millions of teens for his role as hear-of-gold football freshman Henry Parker in Dawson's Creek, Pitt is hardly suited to anodyne portraits of teenage growing pains - despite the fact his cherubic looks have been compared to those of Leonardo DiCaprio, and he's been dubbed "pillow lips" by his fans. A Hollywood outsider - despite appearances in films such as Murder by Numbers and The Village - Pitt is more at home in such arthouse fare as Larry Clark's Bully and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, for which he had to disrobe on screen for the first time.

An antidote to the buffed and bronzed symbols of perfection that dominate our screens, Pitt, with a refreshingly candid take on his peers, is a rebel without a publicist. On his perceptions of beauty in Hollywood, he says: "A lot of girls think [former Dawson's Creek co-star] James Van Der Beek is a looker. Need I say more?" On whether he is mistaken for Brad Pitt's younger brother, he comments: "Sometimes. That'd Probably suck to be the little brother of Brad Pitt. I feel sorry for that guy." And his verdict on Sandra Bullock, the star of Murder by Numbers: "I wasn't very impressed when I met Sandra Bullock. She just seemed like one of those girls. It didn't really seem like we would've been friends in high school."

It's evident Pitt is ill-at-ease with the blandishments of the entertainment industry. With that in mind, it's easy to see why director Gus Van Sant chose the 24-year-old for the lead role in Last Days, a film depicting in all but name the final moments of the legendary singer Kurt Cobain, of the band Nirvana, who killed himself in 1994.

With his stubble and thatch of straw-blond hair, Pitt bears an uncanny resemblance to Cobain. The similarity is accentuated by the clothes Van Sant required his young star to wear - in particular a baggy red-and-black jumper and plastic shades. Pitt is the only one who can't see the resemblance. "I don't think we look alike," he claims. "I don't know. That style - it's just jeans and a T-shirt. I think it's mostly the hair."

Pitt gives an intensely insular performance in Last Days, playing a character called Blake, who is unashamedly based on Cobain. In the opening scenes, Blake can be seen mumbling to himself as he shuffles around the empty rooms of the distressed house where he has, it later transpires, come to die. "It made me feel a lot of different things, but it mostly made me feel sad," says Pitt. "I can only speculate what Kurt Cobain felt. I'm not him."

Millions of others have also speculated at length about what drove Cobain to suicide. The poster boy for the Seattle-based grunge rock movement was just 27 and had the world at his feet when he was found alone and dead, having shot himself in the head. Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind had blown a placid pop world apart with it's mix of punk, metal and sheer unadulterated noise, but Cobain struggled to cope with his underground band's sudden international success.

He married the notoriously troubled singer Courtney Love, and the couple had a daughter, Frances Bean, in 1992. But Cobain had a long-standing heroin addiction, and had already failed in one suicide attempt when he succeeded in taking his life. His premature death ensured Nirvana would be conferred with legend status, and spawn countless imitators. Cobain's Neil Young-influenced suicide not said it all: "It's better to burn out than fade away."

Pitt is wary of sounding like he's speaking for the singer, particularly as his on-screen character is given another name. He believes the film is a more effective way of exploring the complexities of the suicidal rock star than a straight biopic. "When I saw it, I realized that no playing him - Kurt - and not using his name or facts or dates allows the audience to see a human being in that situation, as opposed to Kurt Cobain. In a weird way, it's almost more respectful to the actual person."

Pitt is eminently qualified for the part - he's no rock diva, but does front his own band, Pagoda, and sang on the soundtrack to The Dreamers. He's shy and uncomfortable talking about his music but, when pushed, calls it, "dirty, loud, melodic and vocal-oriented".

"I hate describing music," he says. "People call it rock, and what's that? I have a drummer and a bassist, and I play guitar and sing. I only know how to play what I play." He pauses. "We also have a cello player." He writes his own songs, including the angst-ridden track Death to Birth, which appears in Last Days. "If I sit down and think I'm writing a good song, it always sucks," he says. "The good ones just happen. If you're making something to eat and an idea pops into your head, you don't know why."

Pitt trails off, lost in thought, but switches back on when asked if he felt he was right for such as an iconic role as Blake/Cobain. "I wasn't sold on doing it." he replies. "When Gus said he was thinking about me playing the role, I don't think I took him too seriously. As it got more real, I had a lot of fears. My biggest fear was my music. My music's important to me. I take it seriously. I didn't want to seem as if I was using it for personal gain in any way. My other fear was the fans. Playing someone you really idolized, you just have this feeling like, 'No way, get someone good."

He has been friends with Van Sant for more than six years, since acting in the director's studio film Finding Forrester, and Pitt undoubtedly took the role more seriously than any other in his short career. To reflect Cobain's painfully thin appearance, the actor lost weight on a diet of lettuce and fruit. "The whole time I was shooting, my stomach was in pain, which was really good for the physicality," he says, explaining how he spent much of his on-screen time with his frame drooped. It's as if Blake carries the weight of his fame on his shoulders, he says.

His research involved talking to Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, from the seminal New York punk band Sonic Youth. Both knew Cobain, and Van Sant brought them onto the film as music consultant and actress respectively. Pitt also visited the town of Aberdeen in the northwest of America where Cobain grew up. He found the experience down-beat, to say the least.

"I thought I had a bad childhood," he says grimly. "Literally, you drive about three hours into woods with hundred-foot trees. You come to this little town and you either log or you fish. I can't imagine growing up and playing there. I read somewhere that there was a time when [Cobain's] whole town chased him to his house. So when you grow up with that, and then there's a time when you're accepted by millions of people, you can be pretty bitter. I think I can relate to that on a certain level. A lot of it has to do with class and coming from a working-class environment, entering into a completely different environment."

The son of a mechanic, Pitt grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. He avoids speaking in detail about his background, but he does mention the "guilt" he felt about leaving home and finding success when his family had only ever known poverty. "I definitely have feelings like that, and that's something that someone would feel in that situation," he says. "As for Kurt Cobain, it was probably that times a million."

Pitt admits that, like Cobain, he "didn't fit in growing up"; that he was interested in books and art and so was considered a "freak". Participating in community plays since he was young - though hiding the fact from others - he says if he hadn't found acting he'd probably be pumping gas". Or be dead: he reputedly overdosed on ketamine when he was 15.

He looks down at the table, fiddling intensely with his green canvas bag. "I just kept to myself as much as I could. Got beat up a lot. Tried to find people. Hung out with a lot of senior citizens. And then I left. As soon as I figured out that for five bucks you could go anywhere you wanted on a bus. I left."

He officially left home and school when he was 16. "I didn't do well in school and didn't have a lot of money. As soon as I realized that there was no possibility for me to go to any decent college, I knew there was no need for me to be in high school. So I left. I wasn't going anywhere. I had nothing to lose. And as soon a I realized that, I said, 'I'm rich.' If I had opportunities to go to college, I don't know if I'd have been as hungry for it. That's how I look on the bright side."

With just two cents, a ball of lint and no place to stay, Pitt survived the big, bad city of New York, getting a job as a bike messenger to support himself while studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. At first he lived with nine other males ina one-bedroom flat in Chinatown. "We had to stack our mattresses after we were done sleeping," he says, "It was pretty nasty." And he subsisted for weeks at time on rice. "You could buy a potato-sack-sized bag for three bucks, so I just ate rice."

It was while performing in the play The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek at the New York Theatre Workshop in 1999 that he was spotted and cast in Dawson's Creek. The show, which enchanted adolescents with it's rural American feel and cutesy cast - including the next Mrs. Cruise, Katie Holmes - saved him from his hand-to-mouth existence. After just 15 episodes, though, Pitt was so disillusioned he refused to extend his contract. "I felt really dirty. I felt I wasn't earning the money they were giving me. I think it was ignorance and blind courage. I didn't have a lot of knowledge then. I wasn't a baby. I thought I was going to be a theatre actor for the rest of my life."

The show nevertheless proved a stepping stone towards the material Pitt truly wanted to be associated with. His breakthrough film role was as the adolescent heartthrob rocker Tommy Gnosis in John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and The Angry Inch, a part that saw him selected by Filmmaker magazine as "one of 25 new faces of independent film". He gravitated towards playing outcasts and loners: In both Bully and Murder by Numbers he was an adolescent with violent, murderous impulses, and in The Dreamers he wa a naive film buff drawn towards a menage a trois with a pair of incestuous siblings. He doesn't see his choices as particularly provocative, though: "The majority views them as controversial, so they think I am. But I'm not. I'm not trying to be controversial. I'm just trying to be honest."

Yet, like Cobain, there is also something of the tormented artist about Pitt. On his arm are cut-scars that suggest either a very unpleasant tumble into a rose bush, or something rather darker. Asia Argento, who features as one of Blake's acolytes in Last Days and was *briefly engaged to Pitt in 2004, says he has "this nightmarish thing - the tormented star that you think is going to kill himself all the time and maybe he could trash his room". To be fair, having cast him in a cameo role in her directorial effort The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, she also comments: "He's one of those actors who are so creative that he's going to become a director - he has a vision."

Pitt is not afraid to admit he lacks formal education. "When they talk about the bad schools in America," he says, "I didn't realize until I got out that they were talking about my school in New Jersey. I got labeled very young as one for special education classes. If you're special-ed, they don't expect you to lean so they just pass you, and you don't do work." The gaps in his knowledge are obvious. He doesn't know what "genre" means and when I say that playing this version of Cobain a tour-de-force for him, he looks momentarily confused. "A tour-de-what?" he asks, keen to learn a new phrase.

He claims to be poorly read. "I didn't have anyone shoving books down my throat when I was a kid," he says. "The books I read, I had to find." Yet he cites as his favorite authors James Joyce and Albert Camus, as well as obvious choices such as Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and JD Salinger. "I don't read as much as I should, because I have to read a lot of scripts," he grumbles.

Despite his imitations, Pitt refuses to see his creative ambitions thwarted. He wants to become a writer. "I get a lot of time to write on sets," he says, "thought I didn't write at all when I did Last Days - music or literature. I imagine what I have to do now is put aside two months to write, then do six months of work." He is currently working on a novel. "It's premature to talk about it. It's really hard to write a book. I have a lot of material. I really have to find a lot of time to focus on it and give it what it deserves."

He lives in Brooklyn now, a long way from Hollywood. "I don't like L.A." he says, "and I haven't spent much time there. They've told me I have to, but I don't feel comfortable there. It scares me. I just feel I'd get real dumb. It doesn't inspire me, that place. But then I don't know many people out there. One thing I have heard is that in LA you need a circle of friends. Plus everyone is an actor, and too many people will kiss your ass. It's not good for the brain."

He prefers New York by miles, he says. "The best thing about that city, and what makes it unique, is that when you walk on the street you have the richest men in the world walking right next to the poorest. I don't really see that in other cities. I see very separate classes. There, no-one give a fuck that I'm an actor."

Pitt is more at ease with a Bohemian crowd that includes the cult author JT Leroy and director-cum-enfant terrible Harmony Korine. "I try to stay away from actors, to tell you the truth," he says. While most stars - primed by their agents - are out for the cosmetic rewards a career in Hollywood can bring, Pitt is definitely not. When he says fame is not on the agenda, you believe him. "I try not to think about it because it scares me. I feel that if I get wrapped up in it, I'm fucked. I see people who are wrapped up in it, and that's their life. They exist in that. They don't have friends who are down-to-earth and normal. It doesn't interest me."

He is more concerned with keeping his integrity intact, something he is finding increasingly difficult. His minor role in The Village was satisfying, given it's A-list cast and director - M Night Shyamalan - but Pitt says he "did it for the money" to support himself while searching for more meaningful projects. "There's no handbook," he says. "You have to go with what you can stomach. I've done things I thought I never would, but I've also got more information about the way things are. I've just done a campaign for Armani - that's something I really had no interest in being involved in. In the past, if an actor did that, I'd look down on them. In reality, I can do that - I'm not attached to the business or what it's about - and use it to sustain me financially so I can do films like this one, where I don't get paid."

It sounds as though Pitt has learned to reckon with the commercial realities of the film business. Could it be that he has grown up? "I hope not," he retorts. The question is rephrased: has he learned to use the system? "I guess," he mumbles. "I think it's a balance. There's a moral thing. It's like how far are you willing to go. It's a balance - and hopefully the balance I choose is one that's understood and one I can stomach."

He laments as "frustrating" the fact he had to do Murder by Numbers in order to be considered for The Dreamers. "I'm sure there are rules but I don't pay attention to them," he says. "I'm jaded. They're slowly wearing me down, but I still feel that if you're true about what you want, you will gather with other like-minded people. I plan to be a part of changing Hollywood."

Forthcoming roles suggest Pitt is good to his word. He has a small part in The Hawk is Dying, opposite Paul Giamatti, an actor of similar integrity who recently found recognition with his surprise arthouse success Sideways. "I really admire him," says Pitt. "He's one of the good guys. I learned a lot from him. I can't say anything bad about him. And all the attention he's getting, it's really important. I know it's hard for him to deal with. He's been around forever - and all of a sudden people are giving him work." He appreciates the dilemma. "It's good but it's confusing. Sometimes people won't think much of you - but now they're all nice to you.

Pitt is soon to begin work on Delirious, with director Tom DiCillo, a comedy "about a homeless kid who gets thrown into the business of acting". He compares it to the director's 1995 hit Living in Oblivion. "I'm more attracted to Tom DiCillo because I think he's an interesting director, a little overlooked. But it's not something that's insanely challenging." Other than this though, Pitt has little clue what the future holds. "I'd love to finish my book. And finish a couple of films as a director. And have a house in the woods."

A simple life. Something Kurt Cobain would have appreciated.