After my last divorce, I said I was absolutely going to marry somebody in another field, an aid worker or something. Then I met Brad, everything I wasn't looking for, but the best man, the best father I could possibly wish for, you know? I don't see him as an actor. I see him very much as a dad, as somebody who loves travel and architecture more than being in movies.

She hopes Pitt will spend more time working on architecture—though he's in fact not an architect. "He just has an eye for it," she said. "You hear people talk about design or buildings, and assume, especially when somebody has another career, 'Oh, that's a hobby.' Like somebody coming into money appreciating Picasso. But I have seen him design, with his partners, everything from hotels to studios. Or in New Orleans, with other architects, re-doing a shotgun house with green architecture, bringing light in, angles of the sun in summer and winter, how that would affect the rooms. He's taught me so much about the homes we live in."

Indeed, Pitt once told the very same publication of his awestruck admiration for starchitect Frank Gehry—as evidenced by a widely circulated photo-op, followed by a long string of unopened Gehry Evites. Now, the Burn After Reading star and lifetime Elle Decor subscriber is getting the chance to put his own indelible mark on the global landscape: According to Variety, he's working as "part of a team of consultants designing an 800-room, five-star hotel" in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates city hellbent on turning itself into a metropolis-sized The Grove. Among Pitt's personal contributions: the world's highest dancing waters, set to former Dubai couch-surfer Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," and a trolley made of solid gold that stations in the hotel lobby and stops at every Louis Vuitton location in the greater area.

[Photo credit: Getty Images]

• A Woman in Full [Vanity Fair]
• Brad Pitt turns focus to Dubai [Variety]

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]