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Posing on a red carpet is, by nature, a pretty static act. If you move around too much while all those cameras are clicking, you risk waking up to a juicy Getty Images folder full of unflattering snapshots the next day. But if you’re an especially seasoned Hollywood pro like, say, Brad Pitt or Chris Pine, maybe you’ve had it with the same rigid routine. Maybe, after all this time, it’s time to get the proverbial Led out.
Pitt and Pine seem to have been in what I can only call silly moods lately while promoting their respective new projects. Pitt, whose latest sartorial leaps have somehow eclipsed his bonkers body language during his European Bullet Train press tour, seems to have found new joy in high-kicking and roughhousing while posing alongside his castmates. On Thursday, Pine—who stars in the upcoming D&D adventure movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves—emerged onstage at Comic-Con in San Diego with his dukes up, mean-mugging and kicking his huarache-clad feet into the air. Who says the only action movie is the one on the big screen?
In both cases, the leading men’s pugnacious dynamism inspired hammy courage among their peers, including Pitt’s Bullet Train costar Joey King and director David Leitch, and Pine’s Honor Among Thieves costar Michelle Rodriguez. Which, I guess, makes some sense because what else are you supposed to do if your famous hunky coworker starts punting out of nowhere?
Surely, we at GQ will be the first to admit to the allure of a good kick pose—the mid-2010s were a very particular moment in time for men’s magazines—but there is something confounding about some of our steadiest leading men letting loose while fulfilling their professional obligations. Pitt and Pine, too, have both been reconfiguring their public personas through clothing, while also really leaning into the distinguished hotness that Hollywood bestows exclusively upon men in their 40s and 50s. Or maybe it’s just that, ultimately, actors are simply grown-up drama kids—they’ve done this proverbial song and dance many times.
