Brad Pitt owes a debt to Benjamin Button

In the nearly two decades since his appearance as a hunky cowboy hitchhiker in "Thelma & Louise," Pitt has engineered a balance between high-profile leading-man parts and layered character roles. His amusing turn as a nit-witted gym instructor in the Coen brothers' espionage satire "Burn After Reading" this year was miles removed from his title-role portrayal of a legendary outlaw in Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" or the buffed-out pugilists of "Troy" and "Fight Club."

Because it spans the character's entire life, "Benjamin Button" inadvertently serves as a showcase for Pitt's various cinematic personas. At one point in the movie, he evokes Jack London's Sea Wolf as a craggy sailor of fortune. Later in the film, when Benjamin reaches his prime, Pitt brings to mind James Dean on a motorcycle, or John F. Kennedy on his sailboat, navigating the swells of destiny.

Pitt's startling appearance "from the neck up" as the aged Benjamin was achieved with the help of several smaller body doubles and a bevy of CGI effects. Pitt says he "focused on the knees, and the spine giving out, the relaxed vocal quality, the loss of elasticity."

Movies are a kind of fountain of youth, in which the stars of our memories can remain forever immune to mortality. But Pitt, the onetime golden boy of Hollywood, sounds ready to turn to the next chapter. Lately, he says, he has been acquiring "more friends who are older than myself than younger" -- even though, as he puts it, "I wouldn't say our culture leans toward respecting the wisdom of age and those who've been around a lot. It's Beavis and Butt-head: 'You're old!' "

What matters more than one's age, he suggests, is maintaining a creative spirit that lasts a lifetime.

"Another thing the film points to," he says, "you meet someone who is maybe in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, and you meet them as that person, anyone beyond the age of retirement, so to speak. And you seldom realize they had a whole life of experience. They were just as virile and ingenious and capable as you believe yourself to be."

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reed.johnson@latimes.com