Courtney Love Says She Was Fired From ‘Fight Club’ For Fighting With Brad Pitt Over Kurt Cobain
Even though Courtney Love has a long history as a musician (and a short history as a meme-maker), she is also a pretty accomplished actress. After being nominated for a Golden Globe in 1996, Love won the part of Marla in the cult classic film among male college students between the ages of 18-21, Fight Club.
But shortly after she nabbed the part, Love got into a scuffle with co-star Brad Pitt and director Gus Van Sant, who was looking to make a Kurt Cobain biopic. “I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt,” Love recently said on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. She added, “I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the f*ck do you think are?”
Love was married to Cobain from 1992 until his death in 1994, just a few short years before Fight Club. Love then claimed she was fired from the film after the fight, which should have made her more qualified for a movie titled Fight Club, right? The role eventually went to Helena Bonham Carter.
Van Sant did eventually make a Cobain-inspired pic, but Brad Pitt wasn’t involved. Before she was fired, Love allegedly told the actor, “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.”
Love was then told by Edward Norton, who she was dating at the time, that she had been fired from the fight club, a club that doesn’t exist anyway after all, so it all worked out in the end.