Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt both came up as actors around the same time, and have some of the best runs an actor can ask for from a Hollywood career. They also famously worked together Interview With The Vampire back in 1993, where they found some friendly competition driving Go Karts against each other. But does Pitt think he rivals Cruise on his new survival thriller, Heart of the Beast? The latest of 2026 movie releases has Pitt playing a retired Army Special Forces veteran, James Belmont. Him and his German Shepherd have to brave the Alaskan wilderness after a seaplane crash. Here’s what Pitt said when he was asked if there’s a “healthy competition” going on between them to push themselves physically for movies: No, hell no! I couldn’t keep up with Tom anyway. No, I leave the tough stuff to him.Brad Pitt certainly doesn’t have the kind of reputation for action that Tom Cruise does, but he has been doing more strenuous roles lately. His last movie before Heart of the Beast was the F1 movie with the same filmmakers behind Top Gun: Maverick. As Pitt added: There’s great history since Jeremiah Johnson of amazing, amazing survival stories on film. But, ultimately it was the love story underneath, and where we get to in the end is so warm and so moving to me that it was worth any kind of discomfort we had to go through to tell this story. Both Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are in their early 60s, and showing the world that age doesn’t matter when it comes to being a bankable Hollywood star. Heart of the Beast director David Ayer, who was also in the eTalk interview, was quick to walk back on Pitt’s own answer. In the director’s words: Well, Brad is forgetting the part where we threw him in a bushplane and drove around some glaciers in it. And tossed him into some whitewater, and slid himself down again and again on a mountain side. We dumped him off a ridge, put him underwater for a lot of underwater work, having him haul stuff around, and get out of crashed planes. So, don’t let him undersell the work he did. It sounds like Pitt really was put through the ringer to complete Heart of the Beast. As he shared after Ayer listed what he actually went through for the thriller: It’s good to be humbled, now and again. Funny enough, Pitt and Cruise will have movies out at the same time between Heart of the Beast hitting theaters this weekend, and Digger coming out the following one. Digger is more of a character-driven satire for the action star that’s already dividing critics. Don’t you worry, Cruise isn’t quitting on stunts. Last month it was announced he’s making a Days of Thunder sequel with Anne Hathaway. Pitt may not think he can keep up with Tom Cruise, but wouldn’t it be fun to test that out? For an F1 sequel, perhaps? Either way, we’re happy to see both of them in movie star mode this fall season in movies.