Angelina Jolie And Brad Pitt Draw On Personal Experiences As ‘Deeply Unhappy Couple’ For New Film

Angelina Jolie talks as though it’s difficult not to draw on her own experiences when taking on an acting role, particularly one that casts her alongside husband Brad Pitt. In 2005, Angelina and Brad starred as married assassins in Mr. & Mrs. Smith and for that film, Ms. Jolie confesses that incorporating their real life passion for one another helped them to build such intriguing characters.

Pitt and Jolie are now working together again in By the Sea and as was the case with the couple’s previous collaboration, Angelina says they are again drawing from their personal experiences. In this case, however, it isn’t the chemistry that is helping Jolie and Pitt establish believable characters. Drawing on 10 years of marriage that includes raising five children and balancing two full-time careers, Angelina says that she and Brad are drawing on their struggles with marital frustration.

Ms. Jolie told D.G.A. that the story she penned in By the Sea tells of “a deeply unhappy couple on vacation in France who becomes involved with a pair of newlyweds staying at their seaside inn.”

Angelina reflects on the surrealism of directing and acting with Brad in sequences that required their characters to argue in By the Sea.

“I’d be directing myself and him in a scene where we’re having a fight, and I’d be pulling out the parts [of him] that have an aggression toward me or when you’re frustrated with each other—it was very heavy,” says Jolie. “We kept joking that all of the crew felt like they were living in a house where the parents were fighting and you don’t know where to stand or where to look.”

Some might question the wisdom of starring in a film that compelled Angelina to pick fights with her real life husband, particularly so soon following their wedding, and some actually have asked Jolie if she was bothered by the idea, but Angelina reveals that she’s proud of Brad and herself for committing to it.

“We’re proud of ourselves for being brave enough to try it,” Ms. Jolie says. “I think By the Seawas the hardest film for me because it wasn’t [issue-driven]. It’s something I probably won’t do very much of.”

Angelina Jolie is in a position now that enables her to pick and choose her projects and Ms. Jolie reveals that, as a director whose credits include Unbroken and In the Land of Blood and Honey, there’s definitely a reason for each film she chooses to take on.

“It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell, ” Angelina said. “If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something it has to matter to you, you have to be passionate about it.”

By the Sea will be released on November 13 in theaters.

[Featured image: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt courtesy of Jason Merritt/Getty Images]