Courtney Love Says She Lost Fight Club Role After Rejecting Brad Pitts Kurt Cobain Mo

May 2024 · 6 minute read

Courtney Love joined Marc Maron for an interview on the “WTF” podcast and said that David Fincher hired her to star opposite Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in 1999’s “Fight Club.” Love said she won the part of Marla Singer, eventually played by Helena Bonham Carter in the film. The “Hole” frontwoman was fresh off strong reviews for “The People vs. Larry Flynt” at the time. According to Love, she got fired from “Fight Club” after rejecting Brad Pitt’s pitch for a Kurt Cobain movie.

Love said she “went nuclear” on Pitt after he and director Gus Van Sant approached her about making a Kurt Cobain movie. Love and Cobain married in 1992 and they were together until his death in 1994 at age 27. Van Sant eventually made the Cobain-inspired drama “Last Days,” starring Michael Pitt, but Love said this wasn’t the project Pitt and the director wanted her approval on.

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“I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt,” Love said. “I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the fuck do you think are?”

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Love added that she told Pitt the following: “I don’t know if I trust you and I don’t know that your movies are for profit. They’re really good social justice movies, but…if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”

It was after rejecting Pitt’s Cobain movie that Love was then fired from “Fight Club,” she said. According to Love, Norton broke the news to her. The two were romantic partners at the time.

“He starts sobbing,” Love told Maron. “And he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’”

A source close to the film confirmed to Variety that Love did audition for the role in “Fight Club” but said she was not offered the part. “You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get,” the source added. “It’s common knowledge that roles are not decided by other actors but by the director.”

Fincher allegedly called Love afterwards to confirm she was off the movie. Bonham Carter took over the role instead in the film, which originally bombed at the box office but has since become one of Fincher’s most popular directorial efforts.

In an Instagram post on Friday, Love stood by her comments on Maron’s podcast, writing that “every word” she said is “factual.”

“Brad pushed me a bridge too far. I don’t like the way he does business or wields his power. It’s a simple fact, and it started during the production of ‘Fight Club,'” Love wrote.

“It’s a movie. Indeed, I passed on better roles than [sic] that. Who cares?” she continued. “The point is Brad kept on stalking me about Kurt.”

Love went on to claim that she rejected Pitt’s pitch for a Cobain biopic again in 2020, and felt she “was not heard” and “ignored” during the meeting.

“I had no plans to bring it up with Marc Maron but up it came,” Love wrote. “I told the story because I felt Pitt would not stop pursuing Kurt — unless I said it in public.”

She added, “I don’t want Brad to be pissed off at me and become his resentment. I want him to do better. I’m not into assault. Cmon brother Pitt. I wish you well, truly. If he’s mad at me, that’s his problem. I enjoy him as a movie star immensely. Not so much as a biopic producer.”

Read Love’s full post below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmzROjMLjD8/?igshid=Zjc2ZTc4Nzk%3D

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