Jovana Miskovic Nikolic: I Climbed on Brad Pitt
The singer revealed a childhood memory: meeting Brad Pitt on the set of a film directed by her father, Bozidar Bota Nikolic, who gave Pitt his first major role.
Singer Jovana Miskovic Nikolic revealed on August 30 a childhood memory she had never shared before: an encounter with Brad Pitt at a time when the future Hollywood star was still nobody. The girl who, by her own admission, climbed all over him without a hint of shyness was the daughter of the man who gave him his first major film role, director Bozidar Bota Nikolic. Long before he became one of the most famous and desired men in the world, the young and then completely unknown American spent time right there with her family.
How Brad Pitt Was Discovered
In the late 1980s, Nikolic was shooting The Dark Side of the Sun, an American, Canadian and Yugoslav coproduction filmed across the territory of what was then Yugoslavia, based on a screenplay by Andrew Horton and Zeljko Milanovic, adapted from a story by Nikola Jovanovic. Alongside Pitt, the cast included Cheryl Pollak, Guy Boyd, Milena Dravic, Sonja Savic and Stole Arandjelovic. Because war broke out in Yugoslavia, the film was never shown there, and it did not get its American premiere until 1997, almost a decade after it was made.
It was Pitt’s first major acting opportunity. Until then he had been just one of hundreds of unknown faces at American castings. Over his career in Yugoslav and Serbian film, Nikolic left behind titles that local audiences remembered far better than this coproduction, yet this nearly unknown film turned out, seen from today’s perspective, to be his biggest discovery.
Bota Nikolic spoke in earlier interviews about how he found the future Hollywood heartthrob, describing the casting for the film.
I discovered Brad Pitt. I was at MGM, and out of four hundred actors who came to the casting for this film, I chose him.
The director also pointed out that the Americans never paid him a fee for that film.
”I Used to Climb All Over Him”
Jovana remembers the filming period well, even though she was only eight or nine years old at the time.
I might have been eight or nine. I was little, but not so little that I don’t remember him.
Kurir reports that she gave the statement to K1, while Informer writes that it came from her appearance on Bosko Jakovljevic’s show Spika i Prilika. Jovana had no illusions about how she treated the future star.
“I used to climb all over him, there wasn’t anything I didn’t do to him,” the singer admitted.
Although Nikolic left behind films such as Balkan Spy, Three Tickets to Hollywood, Balkan Brothers and In the Name of the Father and the Son, his daughter says that in his later years he liked to note, with a smile, that the public remembered him most for a single discovery.
I made so many films, won so many awards, and people still remember me for finding Brad Pitt.
The Last Meeting, in Budapest
Nikolic last saw Pitt in Budapest, where he also had the chance to meet Pitt’s then wife, Angelina Jolie, who was directing a film there at the time. Jovana says her father brought back photographs from that trip and told her about meeting the actress.
Bota Nikolic died several years ago, and his daughter had never spoken publicly about the details of this acquaintance before. The memory of a little girl climbing all over a then unknown American has now resurfaced, three and a half decades later, as a reminder that one of Hollywood’s biggest stars got his first major break thanks to a Serbian director.
