Brad Pitt wanted to play Jeff Buckley in biopic but the musician’s mother said no – for one reason
Brad Pitt wanted to play Jeff Buckley in biopic but the musician’s mother said no – for one reason
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The actor asked Buckley’s mother’s permission after inviting her to his wedding to Jennifer Aniston. Jeff Buckley’s mother has revealed Brad Pitt once approached her about starring in a biopic about her son. The musician died in 1997 before his second album was complete. He was recording Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which would be released posthumously in 1998, when a swimming accident took his life. He was 30-years-old.
![[Pitt was denied permission to play Buckley after his mother became concerned with the quality of his singing voice]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/27/12/GettyImages-2169196819.jpg)
Pitt, 61, asked Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert, for permission to create the biopic in 2000 after inviting her to his wedding to Jennifer Aniston, a request she initially granted before later changing her mind. However, the musician’s mother admitted she became reluctant to go through with the project, later asking the actor: “‘We’re going to dye your hair, put brown contact lenses on those baby blues, and you’re going to open your mouth and Jeff’s voice is going to come out?”.
Guibert said she and Pitt remained in touch even after she made the decision not to go ahead with the film. The Fight Club star subsequently acted as executive producer on Amy Berg’s forthcoming Buckley documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival last week.
Of her decision to make a documentary rather than a narrative feature about Buckley, Berg said: “Once I started listening to his voicemail messages and his DAP player and demos and reading his journals, I just couldn’t imagine it being anything but a documentary.
