Brad Pitt was banned from entering China for nearly 20 years because of a film he starred in during the late 1990s.
Namely, the plot of ‘Seven Years in Tibet‘ led the Chinese government to punish the famous actor, as it is based on a historical event from the mid-20th century.
The film was banned by Beijing’s censorship offices and could not be shown in China due to its negative portrayal of the country and its military. Additionally, the famous actor was banned from entering China from 1997 to 2014.
The film, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, is an adaptation of the autobiography of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer who left his family in 1939 to go on an expedition to the Himalayas. When World War II broke out, Heinrich and his friends were captured by British soldiers.
Years later, in 1944, he managed to escape and reached the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Lhasa, where he met and befriended the young Dalai Lama. The two became friends before the invasion of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 1950.
