Thanks to Bono and Jolie, Pitt knew how to respond when Hurricane Katrina ran its way through New Orleans in 2005. “There was a responsibility to make it right, which was not being answered wholly, so I decided to make that a focal point and help families return home, and in the process we started discovering the inadequacies of low-income housing,” he said.

Turning to Bono, he asked for some humanitarian advice. “I sat down with him a few times and got involved in some of the stuff he was doing,” Pitt said.