He Deletes Every Script After Filming—Except for One Line. Brad Pitt’s Acting Secret Is Finally Out

Brad Pitt has spent nearly four decades as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars—an actor whose charisma and craft have kept him relevant far beyond the “sex symbol” label that first followed him in the late 1980s. With a career spanning collaborations with David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Steve McQueen, and Ridley Scott, Pitt has built one of the most enviable résumés in modern cinema.

But in a 2019 interview with PBS, the Ad Astra star revealed a lesser-known secret about his process—one deceptively simple trick that keeps him in character from the first day of shooting to the last.

The “Delete and Reboot” Method

Asked whether any lines from his films had stayed with him over the years, Pitt admitted that he rarely holds on to dialogue after production wraps.

“I kind of like delete the files when I finish the film, and it just reboots for the next one,” he said.

Fans may still stop him in the street to yell “What’s in the box?”—a reference to the gut-wrenching finale of Se7en—but for Pitt, it’s not about remembering every line. It’s about finding the one line that anchors a performance.

One Line to Hold the Character

“It’s funny, with each film, I have one line from the script that I hold on to throughout the film because I hear the character in the one line,” Pitt explained. “It helps me hear the character. That line keeps me from drifting out of gear into some other character.”

For The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford—a film Pitt has often named among his personal favorites—that line was, “Look at my mean hands and my red face, and I wonder about that man that went so wrong.”

“I just thought it was beautiful,” he said. “I always hear that.”

According to Pitt, he thinks about his chosen line every day while filming. “I reset the day,” he said. “That line keeps me from drifting.”

A Physical, Immersive Approach

While Pitt doesn’t consider himself a strict method actor, he often immerses himself physically in a role. He climbed mountains before shooting Seven Years in Tibet, learned to box for Fight Club, and trained with a sword for Troy. This “one-line” technique, however, reveals the mental precision he brings to each project—boiling down an entire character’s voice, history, and emotion into a single phrase that he can return to like a compass.

For audiences, the result is the seamless, lived-in performances that have become Pitt’s trademark. For Pitt, it’s the quiet discipline behind the scenes—a line whispered to himself each morning—that keeps the work honest.

If you’d like, I can also prepare a side feature listing Brad Pitt’s most memorable “one lines” from different films, imagining which quotes might have been his anchors based on his performances. That could make a compelling companion piece.