Pitt Joins Carter in India Home Project
Hollywood star Brad Pitt has joined former US President Jimmy Carter to help volunteers from a Christian charity build homes for the poor in western India, the organization said.
Pitt, who is in India with partner Angelina Jolie for a film shoot, dropped by the tourist town of Lonavla on Monday to briefly lend a hand to thousands of volunteers from Habitat for Humanity.
Each year since 1984 Carter and his wife Rosalynn have spent a week building homes for the organization around the world and promoting its work. This week they were also joined by former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh among others.
Photographs showed Pitt, wearing a white shirt, dark jeans, goggles and a baseball cap, fixing a window grill with gloved hands. Another showed him intently slapping cement on bricks.
This week, the organization is building 100 simple, affordable homes for the poor in Lonavla, about 85 km southeast of Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment hub.
Pitt spent about half an hour working under the hot sun and talking to volunteers, newspaper reports said.
The actor and his partner are spending a month in the western Indian city of Pune shooting for “A Mighty Heart,” a film about American journalist Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002.
Pitt is producing the film while Jolie is playing the role of Pearl’s wife.
Pearl who was abducted and slain by terrorists at Karachi in Pakistan in 2002. Jolie plays Pearl’s widow Mariane in the film. ‘A Mighty Heart’ is based on the book written by Mrs. Pearl after the 38 year scribe was abducted and murdered while investigating links between the terrorist group Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s intelligence services
British security experts reportedly rushed to Pune earlier this week, after being alerted by neighbouring Pakistan that the couple might be targeted because of the political nature of the film.
“These former SAS men arrived to aid American bodyguards already watching over the superstars and their three children. The authorities genuinely feared that the star couple could be prime targets for terrorists,” the Bosh quoted a source as telling the National Enquirer.
The film was earlier slated for shooting in Pakistan, where the events actually took place, but producers decided to film the movie Pune due to terror fear.
The couple recently donated 100,000 dollars to the Daniel Pearl Foundation on the occasion of Daniel Pearl’s 43rd birthday.
TheHimalayanTimes.com