BIOGRAPHY

With a fair-skinned face that recalls Leonardo DiCaprio and blue-green eyes that seem to pierce the screen, actor Michael Pitt has come a long way from his role as a high school football star on Dawson's Creek. An adventurous actor who isn't afraid to take risks, Pitt has appeared as everything from a callous glam rocker (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) to a murderous, introspective teen (Murder by Numbers) -- all with equal conviction.

A native of West Orange, NJ, Pitt realized his future calling at the age of ten. His supportive parents soon gathered the money to send their son to drama school in New York a few short years later. At 16, Pitt crossed the Hudson River with little more than the shirt on his back, and in between the occasional independent film and television role, the aspiring actor supported himself by taking a job as a bike messenger. In 1999, Pitt made his off-Broadway debut in the Depression-era drama The Trestle of Pope Lick Creek, and it was there that a casting agent spotted him and recommended him for a role in Dawson's Creek. With the creative constraints of television failing to fulfill Pitt artistically, however, the rising star quickly gravitated to more challenging feature roles.

A supporting performance in director Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester (2000) found Pitt's recognition factor growing, and his next role was that of glam rocker Tommy Gnosis in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). His creativity and comfort in front of the cameras growing, Pitt took a supporting part in director Larry Clark's Bully before landing his biggest role to date as one-half of a murderous pair of teens in Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers (2002). Though that may have been his highest-profile role, his most creatively challenging role was likely that of a young American living in Paris in director Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which premiered at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. A frank and sexually explicit film concerning the friendship of Pitt's character with a pair of movie-loving Parisian siblings, the film follows the trio as they close themselves off from the world while the 1968 Paris student riots rage outside. That same year, Pitt took the lead as a reclusive young man in the dark drama Rhinoceros Eyes, and also appeared in a supporting capacity in the John Holmes crime drama Wonderland. With no less than four films (The Village, Jailbait, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and West Memphis Three) scheduled for release in 2004-05 alone, fans could rest assured that they would be seeing plenty more of Pitt in the years to come. -All Movie Guide

RANDOM FACTS

+ Sings and plays lead guitar in a band called, Pagoda.

+ Some of the music Mike has said he's into: PJ Harvey, early David Bowie, Iggy/Stooges, the Pixies, Operation Ivy, Sonic Youth, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, John Frusciante and the White Stripes.

+ Mike, along with Alexis Dziena, Ryan Donowho, Rodrigo Lopresti and Bennie Slay make up the group of actors called "The Eastsiders" as they were spotted by casting director Lori Eastside... who was the female lead singer for Kid Creole and the Coconuts, a choreographer for Mick Jagger, and was in Get Crazy with Lou Reed. (Source: IMDB)

+ Currently in the process of writing a book... a semi-autobiography, of sorts.

+ Lawrence of Arabia was Mike's favorite movie as a child. He says, "I would just watch it over and over. It's such a strange movie for a young kid to dig. I think I liked that it was really long. I felt like if I sat through it I would learn something."

+ Mike's first starring role was actually not Hedwig and the Angry Inch but a 7 and a half mintue film called Under Developed, Over Exposed about a guy who is making a movie about his own life. It was written and directed by Alicia Van Couvering (who can be seen in the movie Tadpole) when she attended the New York University's Summer Filmmaker Workshop when she was a sophomre in high school. The short film seem to be made around Mike's stint on Dawson's Creek.

+ Mike auditioned for the movie L.I.E. about two teens but was turned down by writer/director Michael Cuesta. Cuesta was quoted in an article saying "[Bully's] Michael Pitt came in to read for Gary, he was like the first kid and really wanted this part, but I wouldn't offer it to him. He was too old."

+ Once dated French actress Virginie de Clausade. Their first meeting was quite interesting. As she puts it: "We met on a New York street, went to Central Park, and then to jail, for jumping a subway turnstile. We spent 24 hours looking into each other's eyes saying, 'I love you, I love you.'" Other actresses he's been linked to: Alexis Dziena and Asia Argento. He is currently dating model, Jamie Botchert.

+ Eva Green discusses Mike in a 2004 interview:

What would you like to do instead?

"I’d like to compose music… soundtracks… I love the music in the movies. The song ‘Hey Joe’ in the bathtub, Michael Pitt sings the song, he’s a really really good musician. Now he’s gonna do Kurt Cobain – with Gus Van Sant."

And would you consider playing Courtney Love?

"I’d love to, but I don’t look like her! The good thing about Michael is that he looks like an angel, but he’s very dark, and he has violence in him."

Did you get to rehearse with him?

"No, he didn’t even know his lines before shooting. When the hairdresser was doing his hair he was learning his lines for the first time. I was very impressed by that. I’m from the theatre, I learned my lines long in advance. But I’d love to be able to be self-confident enough to improvise, and let myself go."

+ Involved with the Imagine Project, an Art Program run by a former teacher/director of his from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The Imagine Project is a non-profit corporation who's, goal is to encourage and guide children to nurture and develop their creativity through activities such as music, creative writing, and acting.

From their Summer, 2005 newsletter:

As we prepare to celebrate the beginning of our fifteenth year we look forward to an expansion of programs and services in ways we could not have thought possible when we began our first program in Brooklyn at PS 133 in 1991.

Our budget has more than doubled in the past six months. This is due in part to an incredibly generous grant for program development from Giorgio Armani. This grant was initiated by one of our own, Michael Pitt, the brilliantly gifted actor and musician.

Michael, who studied with Bill Bartlett at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, taught with us at the Child Study Center in Brooklyn. Michael and Bill continue to work together as they did on the new Gus Van Sant film "Last Days", and at the Bronx Little School where Michael was a guest director this past June.

LAST KNOWN CONTACT INFO

Michael Pitt c/o Carolyn Anthony 250 West 57th Street Suite 1928 New York, NY 10107