Brad Pitt regrets experimenting with drugs in his youth.

The actor has opened up about dabbling in recreational drug use in the years before meeting his wife Angelina Jolie, and admits he got to a stage where he began to worry he was going nowhere with his life.

He told Esquire magazine in a revealing interview: ''For a long time I thought I did too much damage - drug damage. I was a bit of a drifter.

''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.''

However, the 'World War Z' star soon got tired of the party scene and decided to clean up his act, subsequently landing the life-changing part in 2004's 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' opposite his future wife Angelina.

Brad explained: ''I spent years f**king off. But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity.

''About a decade ago [I made a] a conscious change... It was an epiphany - a decision not to squander my opportunities.

''It was a feeling of, 'Get up.' Because otherwise, what's the point?''

The 49-year-old heartthrob - who has Maddox, 11, Pax, nine, Zahara, eight, Shiloh, six, and four-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne with the 'Salt' actress - insists things have never looked so good for him.

He said: ''I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven't known life to be any happier. I'm making things. I just haven't known life to be any happier.''