Brad vs. Vince: Who’s the money?

As much as we’d like to pretend that actors’ real lives don’t matter, we know it’s not true. We care. We care about how they lost the weight for that role and how they gained it back. We want to know if they loathe their costars, what best-boy grip they seduced during production, and with whom they cheated when nights on the set got extra long. (Unless you’re Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe in “Proof of Life,” in which case, thanks but no thanks. Ignorance really is bliss.)

This weekend, when Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston’s much anticipated comedy “The Break-Up” hits theaters, you can bet that, like last summer’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” audiences will queue up for their tickets with the costars’ personal lives well in mind.

For followers of the Team Aniston vs. Team Jolie struggle, three questions are likely to be front and center: Are Jen and Vince really together? Does Jen ever hassle Vince about what it was like on the set of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” (And why didn’t he put a stop to that burgeoning Brangelina hanky-panky)? And finally: How does Vince Vaughn measure up to Brad Pitt?

That last question is unavoidable. After all, affection for Jennifer Aniston aside, Vince Vaughn seems like the Anti-Pitt. This is a man who has made his movie career getting drunk, picking up chicks, and having a rowdy good time. We first met him when he was playing video games and striking out in “Swingers,” never dreaming that he would be thrust into the limelight and held up as the new replacement for Brad Pitt, 1995 and 2000’s “Sexiest Man Alive”  — two very competitive years, I might add.

In contrast to Vince’s sophomoric carousing, Brad Pitt has spent his career in search of the Dalai Lama, tracking down serial killers, and playing the sadistic side of Edward Norton. His roles have run the gamut from tear-inducing (“Legends of the Fall”) to edgy (“12 Monkeys”), to unintelligible (“Snatch”), but never — not once in his whole career — has he crashed a wedding or spoken jive in a tracksuit. 

FREE VIDEO Big ‘Break-Up’ at box office June 2: Seth Goldman looks at the new Jennifer Aniston-Vince Vaughn movie, “The Break-Up” on National Break-Up Day. msnbc.com

The two men may in fact be complete opposites. If only one can triumph in popular opinion, who will it be?  Brad Pitt, the ripped Adonis turned United Nations activist? Or the fratty “normal guy” Vince Vaughn, whose antics in “Old School” inspired an entire generation of college women to wrestle in jelly? On this, the opening weekend of “The Break-Up,” and the first weekend of Brad Pitt’s new fatherhood, let us look to a few major categories to determine who has the advantage in the lesser-discussed, but no-less epic struggle of Team Vaughn vs. Team Pitt.

The body
While no one knows for certain, it’s rumored that Brad Pitt works out. His body seems like a living pantheon to low carb diet and personal training sessions with a Jujitsu master. The man is a running-uphill-while-doing-one-armed-push-ups-carrying-a-backpack-full-of-anvils brand of ripped. One can imagine that, in happier times, Jennifer Aniston woke in the morning, not to the smell of bacon and eggs, but to Brad splitting a protein shake with a sherpa he met on the set of “7 Years in Tibet.”

Vince Vaughn, on the other hand, represents a much more approachable physical type. He’s a 6-foot-5 teddy bear with just the hint of a belly, possibly earned from days of drinking full calorie beer and skimping on the Pilates classes. Vince is the kind of guy you can imagine putting peanut butter on his pancakes or drinking a Yoo-Hoo. Rumor has it that he’s recently been plying Jennifer Aniston with red wine and desserts in hopes of beefing her up, making him quite possibly the only man alive who truly thinks Hollywood actresses are too skinny. 

Advantage: Team Pitt takes it, with a caveat: No one wants to date a guy who thinks he’s doing you a favor by taking his shirt off. 

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