(CNN) — If you meet Brad Pitt, chances are he won’t recognize you even though he already knows you. That’s because the award-winning actor said in a new interview with GQ that he suffers from face blindness, also known as prosopagnosia, which makes it hard for him to remember people’s faces.
Although he hasn’t been officially diagnosed, Pitt, 58, says he thinks he has it.
“Nobody believes me!” he said. “I want to meet another [persona con él]”.
Pitt told GQ that he wants to remember the people he knows and fears that his problem has given people the impression that he is distant.
Pitt opened up about suffering from the condition in 2013, telling Esquire that’s why he stays home so much.
What is prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that can make people have difficulty recognizing even family or friends, according to the National Institutes of Health. Treatment involves developing other strategies to recognize people, such as concentrating on their voice.
Some research shows that it can affect up to 1 in 50 people to some degree.
There are degrees of disability that prosopagnosia produces. Some people may have trouble recognizing a familiar face, or distinguishing between multiple familiar faces. But others might not be able to discriminate between unrecognized faces, not distinguish a face from an object, or some might not recognize their own face.
What treatment has prosopagnosia?
“The focus of any treatment should be to help the individual with prosopagnosia develop compensatory strategies,” explains the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health (NIH for its acronym in English).
“Adults who have the condition as a result of stroke or brain trauma may be retrained to use other clues to identify people,” they add.
Prosopagnosia can be “socially crippling.”
Voice, clothing, or particular physical attributes may be elements that people with this neurological disorder can use to recognize people. “But they are not as effective as recognizing a face,” says the NIH.
Some children are born with this disorder, and among adults it can be the result of a stroke or brain trauma.