Angelina Jolie has revealed just how tough it was to play an on-screen married couple with real life husband Brad Pitt in her emotionally and sexually charged new movie.
The 40-year-old actress told Entertainment Weekly that both starring and directing in her film By The Sea had a lot more complications then she initially thought it would – especially when it came to a sex scene with her husband.
The star said: ‘It’s the strangest thing in the world to be lying naked in a bathtub with an iPad that’s showing you the shot outside, while your husband is at the door and you’re directing him to come in and make love to you in front of a bunch of other men with cameras.’
The star said she and her 51-year-old love tried to stay as professional as possible, but Brad could not help but be a little protective.
‘I couldn’t get out of the bathtub to get to the monitor because the director is naked. We’re artists and want to be free, but Brad – it’s his wife. He was on towel duty. He’d hold the towel over me.’
In order to get through the scenes in the film, Angelina said she and Brad had to laugh at the situation.
‘Love scenes are strange anyway, but when you’re doing a love scene with a person that you really have sex with? The only way to get through it was for us to all talk about the absurdity of it and make sure no one was feeling awkward.’
But the film is not a tale of a big romance, but rather the collapse of a marriage – and a violent and emotional collapse at that.
When required to hate each other on-screen, the loving couple had to push each other to their limits to get into character.
And Brad certainly did not hold back, taking the preparations to a disgusting level.
‘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 [her character] was sleeping.’
Angelina also revealed that she struggled with the nudity required as it was the first time she had filmed a nude scene since undergoing a double mastectomy, but hoped by doing so, she helped other women.
She told Entertainment Weekly: ‘The surgeries still allow you to be a woman, I hope other women – anyone who is worried about those issues and how [your body] can feel or look – can see that through [the scene]. I’m happy that will be in there if that answers something for them.’