Brad Pitt: 'I did too much drug damage with Jen'

IN yet another blow to his ex, Brad Pitt has revealed he felt he was wasting his life on drugs while married to Jennifer Aniston.

In a new interview with US Esquire magazine the actor opened up about his seven-year marriage to the Friends star and confessed his recreational drug use had a huge impact on his life.

"For a long time I thought I did too much damage - drug damage. I was a bit of a drifter", the 49-year-old tells the magazine.

"A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I followed that other thing. I spent years f--king off," he admitted.

"But then I got but out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change. This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany - a decision not to squander my opportunities. It was a feeling of get up. Because otherwise, what's the point?"

It's not the first time Brad has described life before Angelina as a drug-fueled haze.

In 2011, he told Parade magazine he spent the 1990s "sitting on a couch, holding a joint, hiding out".

"I think that my marriage had something to do with it. Trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn't", he said in the 2011 interview.

The article quotes Jean Black, Pitt's make up artist since 1990, who says Jolie was able to "unleash" his full potential.

"I think Brad was ready to soar when he met Angie", Black told.

"In Angie he saw a very adventurous person who was grabbing onto life and taking it to it's nth degree. It was intriguing as I felt Brad had that in him and wanted to unleash it."

The World War Z star - who appears on the cover of this month's issue - opened up about his now "happy" life with fiancée Ange and the six children they raise together.

"I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven't known life to be any happier," he explained.

Last week, Jolie, 37, revealed that she underwent a preventative double mastectomy after discovering she carried the BRCA1 gene which dramatically increases a woman's risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Brad said he was proud Angelina had decided to speak out and hoped it would "empower" other women, adding the experience had made their family even "stronger".

The star pair is expected to wed later this year.