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What is prosopagnosia? Brad Pitt reveals disorder that leads people to think he's being 'disrespectful'

'Nobody believes me! I wanna meet another,' the 58-year-old actor told GQ’s Ottessa Moshfegh

Brad Pitt in a recent interview has revealed that he believes himself to be suffering from prosopagnosia. The 58-year-old actor told GQ’s Ottessa Moshfegh, “Nobody believes me! I wanna meet another,” when the interviewer said her husband also thinks that he has the same rare condition.

In the piece, Moshfegh noted: “He’s making uncannily good eye contact as he says this, and it’s at this point that I realize that Brad Pitt is definitely not aloof or reserved. He’s the opposite of a guy who’d snub you at a party. He’s the guy who wants to see your soul.”

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However, it’s not the first time Pitt has spoken about it. In 2013, he spoke with Esquire and said: “So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them. Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I’ll say, ‘Thank you for helping me.’ But I piss more people off.”

At the time, ‘The Lost City’ star, who has never been medically tested, had added: “You get this thing, like, ‘You’re being egotistical. You’re being conceited.’ But it’s a mystery to me, man. I can’t grasp a face, and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.”

What is prosopagnosia?

According to the National Health Service (NHS), patients diagnosed with prosopagnosia fail to recognize faces. The website says, “Face blindness often affects people from birth and is usually a problem a person has for most or all of their life. It can have a severe impact on everyday life. Many people with prosopagnosia are not able to recognize family members, partners or friends.”

The NHS site also mentions the consequences of prosopagnosia, which may result in social anxiety disorder. Other impacts that patients face are “difficulty forming relationships or experience problems with their career. Feelings of depression are common. Some people with prosopagnosia cannot recognize certain facial expressions, judge a person's age or gender, or follow a person's gaze. Others may not even recognize their own face in the mirror or in photos.”

Meanwhile, Pitt’s statement has received a lot of mixed reactions from people online as a user speculated: “First Justin Bieber and now Brad Pitt...what is going on...someone will suspect Jab is the cause 🤔🤷.” The second one said, “It is not jab. Brad Pitt has talked about it since 2013.” “It's a real thing. Those diagnosed lose the ability to recognize familiar faces, and even their own apparently. The brain then switches to finding other recognition cues, such as voice, hair, clothing. It only affects facial recognition. Sounds awful TBH,” the third user noted.

“My mother has it. It’s very frustrating. When watching tv or a movie if someone changes a hairstyle she can’t recognize the person. She is also color blind. 😞,” a person shared. “No he’s just getting older and he can’t remember peoples names or faces and he’s embarrassed so now he’s going to assign himself a disorder in order to explain it. But actually it’s probably just natural aging which in Hollywood is akin to death,” another one added.

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