Brad Pitt Paid An Overlooked Star Trek Actor To Beat Him Up

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 2 minutes ago

While both are highly acclaimed actors, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana haven’t spent much time onscreen together. The major exception is the 2004 sword-and-sandals epic Troy, which portrayed the brutal clash between Greek and Trojan forces. To make it as real as possible, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana made a bet with each other.

While the film (especially the director’s cut) has plenty of larger battle scenes, much of the violence in this movie is very intimate. The best example of this is when Pitt and Bana’s characters have an onscreen duel that recreates one of the most exciting conflicts in literary history. It’s a cinematic clash of the titans that happened well before Bana appeared in Star Trek (2009) and Pitt appeared (blink, and you’ll miss him!) in Deadpool 2.

That onscreen duel is arguably the best part of the film, and one that fans still fondly remember over two decades later. Pitt and Bana certainly remember it, but not for the reasons you might think.

Instead of using stunt doubles, the two did the whole fight for themselves, and they made things interesting with a bet: if one person accidentally hit the other, they’d pay $50 for smaller hits and $100 for larger hits. By the time it was over, one star paid several hundred dollars, and the other paid hardly anything!

Duel Or Duel Not: There Is No Try

For context, Eric Bana plays Hector, the crown prince of Troy, while Brad Pitt plays Achilles, the Greeks’ most powerful warrior. During the Greeks’ prolonged attack against the Trojans, Hector ends up killing Patroclus, Achilles’ beloved cousin.

An enraged Achilles challenges Hector to a duel outside of the city, and they engage in a fierce battle that lasts for nearly three minutes of tense, nail-biting screentime. Eventually, Achilles wins, dragging Hector’s body back to his camp as a kind of grisly trophy of his victory.

Eruc Bana And Brad Pitt Paid Each Other For Hits

Going into this Troy fight scene, Bana and Pitt made the bold decision to do all the stunts themselves. This made it easier for director Wolfgang Petersen to bring this epic conflict to life, but it also made it far easier for the two actors to accidentally hurt each other.

To make things interesting, Bana and Pitt made a gentleman’s wager regarding accidental hits: every time someone landed a smaller tap, they’d pay the other $50. For each larger hit, they’d pay $100. When it was all said and done, Pitt was the real loser here. His character may have won onscreen, but the actor had to shell out $750 for repeatedly hitting Bana.

What about Bana, though? Some versions of this tale claim that he didn’t pay anything at all. But when news of this wager was first reported, the Chicago Tribune claimed that he paid $200 to Pitt for his own accidental hits.

That means that he came out over half a grand ahead of his costar simply by demonstrating a little self-control. There’s some irony there, of course: previously, Bana’s biggest role was the lead actor in Ang Lee’s Hulk, so everyone on set was likely very concerned about making him angry.

After all, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry!