Angelina Jolie Pitt has always had a fearless streak. A teenage rebel, her acting career helped channel her inner rage and sense of alienation. Though success came quickly, she still felt a gripped by existential woes.
Becoming a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador was a first step in relieving that anxiety, followed by the adoption of her first child and her relationship with Brad Pitt. They were instant life partners, and a decade later they confirmed their devotion to each other and their children by getting married last August.
It was the happiest of times. But Jolie Pitt has never been one to stay comfortable for too long. She had written a dark story about a couple in disarray, and was determined to direct the project and have her newlywed husband play opposite her.
The result is By the Sea, a film about an estranged couple battling grief and each other. It was both fearless and dangerous for Jolie Pitt to want to make this movie with Pitt as her character’s antagonist and she knew it: “It was the worst idea”.
“We made the film during our honeymoon,” Jolie Pitt says. “It wasn’t the easiest kind of thing to do with your partner, but we had our children with us and when we came home we didn’t carry the difficult emotions with us. That helped us deal with everything, and in the end, the experience brought us closer together.”
By the Sea is set in France during the mid-seventies. Jolie Pitt plays Vanessa, a former dancer whose marriage to Roland (Pitt), an American writer, is disintegrating.
In the middle of a cross-country road trip, their adventure takes a new twist when they decide to spend time at a seaside village where they meet a colourful array of characters, including the local barkeeper and a hotel owner, respectively played by distinguished French actors Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Richard Bohringer (Diva).
The film focuses on the couple despairing and otherwise trying to find meaning to their fragile relationship while the audience is kept hanging as to whether the result is rapprochement or final separation. Said Jolie Pitt about the process of working with her husband:
“We watch this couple go off the track and we wait to see if it gets more unhealthy, or if they will recover. I think too often people go through very painful transformative experiences and they don’t stay together. They abandon each other.”
Angelina Jolie Pitt with husband Brad Pitt
Did you worry about the risks to your own domestic tranquillity when you decided to write the screenplay and then act in the film with your husband?
It wasn’t the safest choice you can make but we’re both actors who are looking to challenge ourselves. We knew it would probably be exhausting and difficult to play these characters but we were ready for that.
We also knew that the characters are very different from us in that we could separate our own feelings from those our characters are expressing. But of course, you’re drawing on your own emotions and bringing out aggressive and angry behaviour because you need that for your scenes together.
Was it difficult?
It was very difficult on certain days but we’ve been together a long time and we know each other very well. We didn’t allow it to affect our own feelings for each other or stir up things. We also had to go back to our children and to our usual lives as parents, which helped take us out of whatever mood we left the set in. We looked forward to having our children around us and they’re so active that it made us feel normal again.
Are your children a constant source of stimulation for you?
It keeps getting more interesting watching them grow up and develop their personalities. They ask more and more questions and have such a great curiosity about life. It’s so beautiful to be part of that. It takes up a lot of your time to look after a big family but I try to spend time with all the children every day, as well as spend some time alone with each of them, which is also important.
How does your life as a mother feel different from the time when your life was much more focused on your acting?
The children are so much a part of my life and Brad’s that we don’t worry or stress ourselves about not working more often. Brad still enjoys acting as much as he always has and I’m fully supportive of him. Acting is just not as important in my life as it once was and I’m very happy to be able to spend most of my time looking after our children. I don’t feel as if I’m depriving myself from anything except maybe sleep! [Laughs]
You are someone who leads a very busy life between your work and the responsibilities of raising six children. How do you see your priorities?
First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that. We have our work, of course, but I tend to think of my acting career as a small part of my life and I want to spend more time with my family as well as travelling the world on behalf of the United Nations.
Acting is just not as urgent or necessary for me anymore. I needed acting earlier in my life because it was very therapeutic for me. But then I changed my outlook on myself and my life and now it’s something I still enjoy but it’s just not as important as it used to be.
How does directing a film compare to the kind of involvement required when you’re acting in it?
There’s always going to be pressure and extreme demands on your time and energy. On my first two films I was away from the children much more and that’s when having a great father and partner has helped me deal with that kind of stress.
Brad has always been willing to support me and assume the responsibility of looking after our family when I haven’t had the time. That has given me the confidence to be able to commit to different projects and know that we can still be a happy family even when I need to spend some time away.
You travel a lot as a family together. Does that make things harder?
It’s hard, but I’m not a single mom with two jobs, trying to get by, every day. When I feel I’m doing too much, I do less, if I can. I’m in a rare position where I don’t have to do job after job; I can take time when my family needs it. The nice thing about being a director is that I can say, “I can only get into the room after the kids are at school, and I have to be back for dinner. And they’re coming for lunch”.
I actually feel like women in my position, when we have everything at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children.
That’s hard. I have much more support than most women around this world, and I have the financial means to have a home and help with care and food. So I don’t consider it a challenge. My kids are here, upstairs. They home school, so we travel everywhere together. They were on set almost every day for Maleficent.
When you look at your life as it is today, does it seem very far removed from your perspective on things when you were a teenager or in your twenties?
It’s a big difference, but all the pain I went through when I was younger was my way of trying to get to where I am now. I wasn’t happy with how things were for me because I thought I wasn’t accomplishing enough and all the characters I played in my films were leading much more interesting lives than I was.
The basic thing was that I was searching for some greater purpose and goal in life, and when I started working with UNESCO and doing humanitarian work, I began feeling that I could point to something concrete that I was doing to help people who had very little hope. I’m very glad to have been able to do that work.
