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Pitt and Cruise due in Berlin next week for film premieres

DPA/The Local
DPA/The Local - [email protected]
Pitt and Cruise due in Berlin next week for film premieres
Oh Brad, more flowers? you shouldn't have. Photo: DPA

Two of Hollywood’s biggest leading men are due in Berlin over the next two days, with Brad Pitt in the capital to promote his new film, quickly followed by Tom Cruise for the premier of his own flick.

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Pitt will be in Berlin on Monday for the opening of Benjamin Button, where he stars as a boy born as an old man, who gets more youthful as he ages.

Cate Blanchett stars with him in the film which was directed by David Fincher, who already worked with Pitt in Seven and Fight Club.

Pitt has been in Berlin recently filming Inglorious Basterds with Quentin Tarantino, in which he plays the leader of a group of Jewish American soldiers fighting the Nazis.

Cruise will be in Berlin on Tuesday for the European premier of "Valkyrie," the Claus von Stauffenberg story, in which he stars as von Stauffenberg, who tried but failed to blow up Hitler with a bomb.

His film, directed by Bryan Singer, has been surrounded by controversy not only for putting Cruise, a devoted Scientologist, in the role of a man regarded by many Germans as a hero, but also because during filming there was a row over whether they would be allowed to film in the original site of von Stauffenberg’s execution.

Von Stauffenberg’s family has displayed mixed reactions to the making of the film – and this weekend to Cruise’s contribution.

Great-nephew Franz von Stauffenberg told the Welt am Sonntag he thought Cruise was simply no good. “Tom Cruise pales beside his colleagues,” he said.

“He just isn’t cool enough. And he is too short.”

But he said the fact that the film was made was important, as it brought his great-uncle’s name and actions to a wider audience: “Now people don’t just know Hitler, Boris Becker and Heidi Klum. That is great.”

The presence of Pitt and Cruise provides something of a starter-course for the main meal of stars and films that is the Berlinale which begins on February 5 and runs for ten days.

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