They’re both in their early 50s, have legions of devoted followers (and outspoken detractors), and have enjoyed long, successful careers. But that’s not where the similarities between President Obama, 52, and actor Brad Pitt, 50, end. Pitt and the president are actually related, say genealogists at Ancestry.
The president shares an 18th-century Virginia ancestor with the superstar actor-producer. Edwin Hickman, who died in 1769, connects Obama and Pitt as ninth cousins.
Brad Pitt and Barack Obama Ancestral Connection
Hickman’s connection to Obama comes through his mother, Ann Dunham, who grew up in Kansas. Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya. Dunham and Obama Sr. met as university students in Hawaii, where the future president was born.
Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and raised in Missouri in a strict Baptist household. Pitt is now an Obama supporter, but not everyone in the Pitt line of Edwin Hickman descendants backs the 44th president.
In 2012, Pitt’s mother, Jane Pitt Springfield, wrote a letter to the editor of the Springfield New-Leader supporting Obama’s rival, Mitt Romney and warning readers about the president’s supposed views on abortion and same-sex marriage.
Obama, nevertheless, went on win reelection, cementing his legacy as the country’s first biracial president.
Like President Obama, there’s no doubt that Pitt is aware of the role race has played in American history. In 2013, Pitt co-produced the drama 12 Years A Slave, a film depicting pre-Civil War slavery in all its brutality and based on the autobiography of a free black man kidnapped into bondage in 1841. “If I never get to participate in a film after it, this is it for me,” Pitt said shortly after the Oscar-winning film premiered.
But it doesn’t look like either of the cousins’ careers is over just yet.