By the Sea

Angelina Jolie Pitt on Filming Fight Scenes with Brad Pitt

When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Pitt began filming By the Sea, they knew they were going to discover new things about their relationship.

One big surprise? Jolie Pitt, who directed the film, admits it was especially eye-opening to see how they both react in the aftermath of a blowout.

“Brad has never seen what I’m like when he’s left me after one of our fights,” she told French Elle for its December issue. “Sometimes I’m strong. But as soon as he leaves the room, I melt into tears.”

“With this film, he sees it,” she added. “And I see into his private moments.”

Jolie Pitt, 40, said that seeing how the other copes after a fight helped them understand one another better in their real-life relationship.

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The Telegraph

From Fight Club to family man, Brad Pitt tells Mick Brown how being a father of six has changed him as a man and as an actor

There was a time when Brad Pitt, like most people, would enter a hotel through the front door, but that hasn’t happened for the best part of 20 years. ‘I’m usually carted up the ass end,’ as he puts it. And so it is that here, as everywhere else, he has been denied the pleasures of a hotel lobby thronged with the svelte and the affluent – for this is a very swanky hotel indeed – and too the pleasures of taking a stroll on a sunny autumn morning unmolested, lending his fourth-floor room, luxurious as it is, a curious air of confinement.

It is an air somewhat exaggerated by the fact that, in his downbeat sweatshirt and tracksuit trousers, the Kangol cap pulled down low over his forehead, the straggly half-beard, Pitt looks less like you expect him to look and more like a man attempting to disguise himself as his own minder.

In fact, Pitt’s minder is outside in the corridor, an imposing presence, standing quietly beside the gaggle of clipboard-wielding publicists. He is perhaps less a precautionary measure for Pitt – who with his muscled 6ft frame appears perfectly capable of looking after himself – than for his wife, Angelina Jolie, who is in an adjacent room being interrogated by a handful of European journalists.Being the most recognised show-business couple in the world has its own perils and disadvantages.

Pitt walks over to turn off the air conditioning and reaches for two bottles of water. He is a courteous man, his manner attentive and earnest. Very earnest. He is in London for discussions about his latest project as a producer, ‘a satire about the war in Afghanistan’ (he does not elaborate), but mostly to talk about his role in By the Sea, a new film written by, directed by and co-starring Jolie.

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That time Brad Pitt peed on Angelina Jolie Pitt’s shoes during By the Sea

Angelina Jolie Pitt wrote the script for By the Sea (in theaters Nov. 13) not knowing anyone would ever see it, let alone that she’d direct and star in the film alongside husband Brad Pitt.

In addition to exploring the subject of grief — the real-life pair play Vanessa and Roland, an estranged married couple who check in to a hotel in 1970s France while grappling with an unnamed sorrow — Jolie Pitt wanted to do a project where she could have creative freedom. “I always wanted to be on a set where I could explore and improvise.”

So when it came to making the film — which also stars Mélanie Laurent, Melvil Poupaud, and Niels Arestrup — that’s exactly the atmosphere she created. “I tried to make it clear to everybody that I wasn’t sensitive if they thought something should be said a different way, but I was surprised by how much people stuck to [the script]. A lot of our improv was in the behavior — though the crazy stuff didn’t make it into the film. It went awry,” she says. “We would try big crazy things, and then go, ‘Okay, that’s too far.’”

What’s too far exactly?

“Brad and I had this one day when we were like, ‘Let’s just do ridiculous things and see what happens.’ By the end of it, he had pissed all over my shoes, I had packed up the entire [hotel] room to leave, and he wrote ‘pillhead’ with an arrow on my head with a Sharpie while Vanessa was sleeping.” She laughs. “So it was interesting. The script led us to many beautiful discussions about life and loss. It bought everyone closer.”

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