Hollywood power couple Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt showed a united front as they held the world premiere of ‘By the Sea’ which Jolie Pitt directed and starred in alongside her husband, Brad.
The film, which is set in France, follows a couple whose relationship is in turmoil.
The actress and director arrived with her husband and then greeted long-standing Hollywood actress Gena Rowlands on the red carpet, where she explained her reasoning’s for making such a personal film alongside her partner, who met in 2005.
“What was really really nice was to say after 10 years of marriage that – and anyone that’s married or in a long term relationship knows this – that you cannot just keep things in and you can’t play it safe. You’ve got a long life ahead of you and you’ve got to shake it up and sometimes it’s wonderful to test yourselves and push each other. I talked to Gena Rowlands before and she was talking about her and John (Cassavetes) and how you take the rubber band and you stretch it as far as you can and this is a part of marriage and it’s wonderful so that I loved and that was what we did.”
The couple met on the set of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’, which Angelina Jolie recently was reported to say was the film which reminds her of falling in love.
Brad said that ‘By The Sea’ was a film at a time “when we’re continuing to stay in love.” He added that working with his wife was “no different to getting the kids to bed at night. It’s a tag team, ultimate wrestling endeavor and here on set we’re working together and solving problems and making the thing work and figuring it out and it’s just a great collaboration. You know, she’s my wife.”
Angelina, when interviewed by The New York Times, admitted that her marriage to Pitt was finalized in an edit suite. Pitt also acknoledged this on the red carpet and admitted “We do a lot of things at once and we’ve got to take the opportunity whenever we can get it. That’s why we squeeze in a marriage and a film about a couple whose marriage is dissolving, you know. It stacks up as it stacks up.”
The film is personal to Jolie Pitt as it not only is based around the grief for her mother but also during filming she had a cancer scare and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
When asked if she felt there was a release by finally premiering the film which had been such a personal journey for her, she replied “I think when I get home tonight and think that it’s over and it went that full circle from me sitting alone at my desk having never put a film out in the world so having never ever thinking that anyone would see this. I just sat alone and I was missing my mother and I was wondering about her… I thought she had a very unfulfilled life as an artist As a mother it was very fulfilled but as an artist it was very unfulfilled so it was very sad to me so to try to understand that and live in that skin and think about her and think about grief was something I thought was very private and I never intended on sharing it but now I feel happy to share it but of course, I feel shy about it.”
Despite feeling shy, she said “it was important to try to do it. It was important to do it for my mother, it was important to do it for myself and it was wonderful to work with Brad and for us to be able to get through it together because we tested ourselves to see if we could do something like this together.”
“By the Sea” goes on release in the United States on November 13. The AFI Fest runs until November 12. (Reuters)
