Michael Pitt

In 2017, Pitt starred in the science fiction action film Ghost in the Shell as the villanous hacker, Kuze, the Laughing Man.

In January 2015, Pitt made his official directorial debut with a campaign film for fashion label Rag & Bone's Spring 2015 collection. The video features Pitt and prior co-stars actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey—the new face of Rag & Bone womenswear—and British actor Stephen Graham, from I Origins and Boardwalk Empire, respectively. Says Rag & Bone co-head, Marcus Wainwright, "[Pitt]'s a really talented actor and musician, and he came to us with this concept of doing a film-based campaign. We thought it was awesome and well worth trying." Pitt has also directed a number of music videos for Pagoda.

To be honest, I make very controversial films. The films that I've made have been very, very bold choices. As the years go by, I think my work is going to come more and more in context. The truth is that you can't take what people say too seriously. If I cared what people think about my career, I would have not done—just look at my work. Don't look at me, look at what I've done. Every movie that I've picked, from my first film on, has been considered by everyone to be "career suicide." And I have an amazing life. I have an amazing career. I work with artists. But I'm not making Spider-Man.

In 2014, Pitt juggled two starring roles, as Tommy Uva in the comedic American crime drama Rob the Mob and as a molecular biologist in search of the truth about the origins of the eye in the science fiction romantic drama I Origins.

Pitt has modeled for numerous designer campaigns. In 2012, he was named the face of Italian fashion house Prada and modeled their menswear line. He was also featured in two separate Rag & Bone campaigns prior to the release of his self-directed campaign—once for Fall/Winter 2013, with French actress Léa Seydoux, and once for Fall/Winter 2014, with acclaimed actress Winona Ryder.

In 2010, Pitt was cast as Jimmy Darmody in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (about the rise of Atlantic City during the Prohibition era), as the protégé of corrupt politician Nucky Thompson, played by Delirious co-star Steve Buscemi. He appeared in the show's first two seasons and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critics's Choice Award for his performance. In 2014, he was cast in the recurring role of Mason Verger in the NBC series Hannibal playing the role in the show's second season. He subsequently left and was replaced by Joe Anderson.

Pitt sang and played guitar in his band, Pagoda, whose self-titled debut album was released by Universal/Fontana/Ecstatic Peace in 2007.

In 2006, he starred in the unconventional romantic comedy Delirious as a young homeless man who befriends a celebrity photographer and falls in love with a pop singer. The movie appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The following year, he played opposite Keira Knightley in Silk, adapted from the novel by Alessandro Baricco, as Hervé Joncour, a French silkworm smuggler, who falls in love with a baron's concubine while in Japan.

Pitt is of half-Italian heritage. In 2005, Pitt revealed that he had been "engaged for a long time now" to the model Jamie Bochert, and said of her: "She's my other half."

In 2001, Pitt earned a breakout role as the lover of a trans rock star named Hedwig in the film adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell's Tony Award-winning production Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Although not his first film role, Pitt's performance as Tommy Gnosis led to a series of supporting roles in many acclaimed and often controversial films, including Larry Clark's Bully, Murder by Numbers, and Funny Games, a remake of Michael Haneke's 1997 film of the same name. One of Pitt's more notable roles was as the lead in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.

Pitt made his Off-Broadway debut in 1999 in the play The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek at the New York Theatre Workshop.

During his theater debut, a casting agent whom Pitt had mistaken for a police officer attempting to arrest him noticed him and recommended him for a guest role on the television series Dawson's Creek. He played Henry Parker in 15 episodes (1999-2000).

Michael Carmen Pitt (born April 10, 1981) is an American actor, model, and musician. Pitt is known in film for his roles in Murder by Numbers (2002), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), Gus Van Sant's Last Days (2005), Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007) and M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), and in television for his roles as Henry Parker in the teen drama Dawson's Creek, Jimmy Darmody in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Mason Verger in the NBC series Hannibal. He has also appeared in the films Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Bully (2001), Silk (2007), Seven Psychopaths (2012), I Origins (2014), and Ghost in the Shell (2017).