Pitt’s dedication to playing Jeffrey Goines had the actor pushing himself into extra rehearsals. Pitt would run lines by himself, sometimes at odd hours of the day, startling members of the crew. It was especially scary given that the hospital scenes in “12 Monkeys” were shot at the now-shuttered Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, a spooky prison said to be haunted. Beecroft remembered a particular moment late at night, wandering the empty halls of the closed prison and running into Pitt, in character, working himself into a wild frenzy:
“I was working in the prison one night, late. That prison is thought to be haunted. Al Capone was there. It has trees growing in the halls because it has been abandoned for so long. Brad comes walking in. He started running his lines in this abandoned asylum at 10 o’clock at night. He was trying to be Jeffrey Goines and speak as fast as he could and get that insanity there.”
It’s not unusual for actors to visit the set and run lines, although it was creepy, given the setting.
Gilliam, meanwhile, was very impressed with Pitt’s work. Indeed, because Pitt was so energetic and Willis so laconic, Pitt handily waltzed away with every scene he was in. Gilliam recalled, however, that it would take a toll on the actor. He poured so much into his performance on the first day that he ended up running out of juice:
“Brad was stealing all the scenes. Brad is out there firing on all cylinders. Brad had worked so hard that on his first day of shooting he pulled out all the stops and by the end of the day he could barely move. He was so drained. It was great to see it.”
His efforts did not go unnoticed.