Jen Wants Brad to Bring Home His Skirt

By Courtney Rubin

05/14/2004 at 09:00 AM EDT

Brad Pitt doesn't skirt the real issues.

When asked a Byzantine question at a Cannes press conference Thursday to promote his new movie Troy – about whether being married to a Greek woman and playing the Greek hero Achilles made him think of Greek women – Pitt (who is married to Jennifer Aniston) answered as best he could, PEOPLE reports.

"I still don't understand the question," he said, "but I'll riff. I will tell you my wife liked the costume. My Greek wife asked me to bring it home." He paused for maximum comic effect before adding with mock guilelessness, "I have no idea why."

The wiry 40-year-old, sporting not a skirt but a cream-colored suit and sunglasses, also put to rest questions about whether his busy Troy-promoting schedule had prevented him from seeing last week's grand finale of his wife Friends.

"It was good," he said, emphasizing the final word of his sentence.

While the 45 minutes of questions to the cast were largely directed at Pitt, there were some serious moments.

Asked to compare the war in Iraq to The Iliad (the source material for Troy, which screened Thursday night in Cannes and opened Friday in the U.S. to mixed reviews), Pitt said: "If you read The Iliad, there's no way you can't make comparisons. War produces tragedy; people die."

Pitt was in Cannes for barely a day, walking up the red carpet with Aniston, 35, and not even staying to watch his two-hour and 40-minute epic. He had to catch a plane to Tokyo for – what else? – another Troy premiere.