Credit: Far Out / 20th Century Fox / Universal Pictures
Sat 22 August 2026 12:22, UK
In 1993, Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt were Hollywood hopefuls cast in the Dominic Sena-directed film Kalifornia.
The movie revolves around two journalists and their teenage girlfriends going on a tour of famous murder sites across America, unaware that one of them holds a grisly secret. With casual, equanimous violence at its core, it unspools with the same odd mixture of brutality and ease, like a razor blade embedded in a bar of soap, that Terrence Malick’s masterful Badlands had achieved a few decades earlier.
While such an intensely savage reflection of the darkness in American society might not seem like an ideal place for a romantic affair to flourish, two of its young leads were enjoying the boon of puppy love as they looked to make their mark on the industry. Juliette Lewis dated Brad Pitt for four formative years, from 16 to 20, before estrangement set in.
“He’s not in my universe at all now,” she later told the Guardian. “It seems like a high-school relationship because now he’s a very famous person.” In fact, the two-time Oscar winner (one as a producer) may well be Hollywood’s most recognisable male lead.
While Lewis herself is, of course, a star, Pitt resides in rarified echelons with Quentin Tarantino referring to him as “one of the last remaining big-screen movie stars”. So, Lewis reminisces curiously with each passing coffee advert or Oscar jaunt, adding, “I look at this person that I shared a bit of history with. I hope he finds happiness because I genuinely loved him.”
The Los Angeles-born multi-hyphenate adoringly continues, “He’s a very stand-up, good guy. Four years was an eternity at that time. It was my longest relationship, and we both lost our anonymity together.”
Their relationship arose at a crucial time as they dealt with the rigours of fame, and both credit each other as supportive partners as they made sense of their new lives. “Huge life changes all occurred, all connected to that person,” Lewis recalled. In their youthful love, they even started dressing alike and sharing a haircut, an odd theme Pitt has continued with each new partner.
Credit: Alamy
Oddities aside, Lewis muses, “We’re strangers now. Isn’t that weird? I don’t know him as an adult, and he doesn’t know me. I know that he likes interesting women, always has, and I know that he’s a guy from Missouri that grew up in a very small world and it took huge courage for him to leave.” It’s a thought that singer-songwriter Emma Tricca gave voice to with the gorgeous ‘Lost in New York’ line, “So strange how people walk into someone’s life, changing the weather once and forever, then you don’t remember their face anymore.”
However, the relationship at the time was not without a touch of controversy. When Lewis was 17, and when the pair had entered a full relationship, Pitt was soon turning 27. Naturally, this age gap raised a few eyebrows at the time. Despite this, Lewis has always downplayed the disparity and the fanfare behind the entire relationship itself, for that matter, remarking, “It amazed me that people are still fascinated that we went out for four years,” she said.
She added, “I was in my high-school years, and it was a wonderful, loving relationship with a fun, smart guy.” She claims that the similar trajectories of their life put them on a more even keel than their ages might have suggested.
Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis, and a 2005 rock song
However, this blasé attitude hasn’t stopped Lewis from continually revisiting the subject of the different phases people face in their lives and the impact that has on love affairs throughout her creative work. In 2004, she formed the raucous indie grunge band Juliette and the Licks after attending a Blondie concert with Hole drummer Patty Schemel. At the time the band started, Lewis endeavoured to give it all of her effort and decided to forgo romance as a result.
She commented, “You know, I get lonely – I’m not going to lie about that … I kind of signed up in my mind that I’m giving myself wholeheartedly, full-throttle to my creative life, and I don’t want to be distracted.” So, for years, she wilfully shunned romance.
From this fervent creative mantle, Lewis often looked at the relationships she had set to one side in a sort of subconsciously reflective fashion. None more so than on the Juliette and the Licks track ’20 Year Old Lover’. The song traverses the pitfalls of an age gap in a relationship, a subject Lewis knows very well, with lines like: “I was wondering maybe I could pick you up, At your mother’s house, And you could gimme a little kiss before she kicks me out.”
Although ostensibly a pithy rock ditty, having been in the same shoes as the protagonist, the song is no doubt informed by her time with the aspiring star who ascended to the lofty perch of Hollywood’s leading frontman. While the old couple still remains estranged, Lewis looks back on her relationship fondly and thanks Pitt for being a stable and loving presence as they rapidly rose towards bewildering fame, even if question marks still remain.
As for Pitt, he clearly looks back fondly. “I still love the woman. There’s some real genius there. I had a great time with her,” he admitted in an interview.
“It was one of the greatest relationships I’ve ever been in. The problem is, we grow up with this vision that love conquers all, and that’s just not so, is it?” he told Vanity Fair. In many ways, while ’20 Year Old Lover’ is ostensibly a song about figuring out a complex romance in the moment, the sentiment Pitt reflects clearly lingers over the endeavour with angsty dissonance.
