Brad Pitt Admits He Spent a Year Searching for Buried Treasure on His French Estate

It’s dumb to say celebrities are just like us, because even if they’re grocery shopping, carrying a cardboard box, or picking their nose, they’re still doing it with millions of dollars in their bank accounts and with multiple homes to hang out in. But to say that celebrities are just as easily scammed and as pathetic as us? That’s satisfying.

The latter is what happened to Brad Pitt who, despite being super fucking rich, admitted to British GQ that he spent a year searching for buried treasure at his French estate—because a random guy told him that there was buried treasure at his French estate.

“I got obsessed,” Pitt told the magazine, adding that he also bought radar equipment. “Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all.” The man—who, British GQ reported, just wanted Pitt to invest in his radar company—apparently told him that a previous owner stole a ton of gold during the Medieval era and buried it on the property.

Pitt bought the estate, aka Château Miraval, with his then-wife Angelina Jolie for $28.4 million in 2008. It was first occupied by a monastery in the 13th century, before French nobility took it over in the 15th century. I can’t imagine a bunch of monks hoarding wealth—though I guess you could convince me that aristocrats buried gold at their country home in the 1400s. But definitely not enough to buy radar equipment.

“Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up,” Pitt said of his willingness to believe the radar salesman, “because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.” Just admit you got scammed, bro. There are tales of buried treasure everywhere—but very few tales of anyone searching for buried treasure when all they had to do was simply search their bank account. We’ve never heard of Saoirse Ronan or Colin Farrell taking a year out of their lives to go digging up Ireland for a pot of gold. (Although there’s a documentary I’d love to see.)

Pitt, who is estimated to be worth around $300 million, admitted the whole ordeal left him feeling “pretty foolish in the end”—a feeling that, I’m sure, quickly dissipated once he remembered to check his bank account.