Angelina Jolie: 'I Didn't Like Directing Myself' in New Film With Brad Pitt

Jordan Zakarin
Updated
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Angelina Jolie on the set of By the Sea

Though she’s an Oscar-winning actress — and arguably the most famous woman in the world — Angelina Jolie has in recent years make the bold decision to move behind the camera: Her first feature was the Bosnian War-set drama In the Land of Blood and Honey, and her follow-up, this month’s Unbroken, is a biopic of World War II hero Louie Zamperini. All the work involved in making films has largely kept her off the screen; with the exception of this spring’s Disney hit Maleficent, the 39-year-old has largely relegated herself to voiceover work in the past few years.

For her third time in the director’s chair, however, Jolie decided to get a two-for-one experience by casting herself alongside husband Brad Pitt in the drama By the Sea, which shot in Malta this fall. As it turns out, though, Jolie found the dual experience less than pleasant.

“I didn’t like directing myself,” the actress/filmmaker told Yahoo Movies this month. ”I don’t know how good I am as an actress under my own supervision. I think one of the joys of being a director is not being in front of the camera, but also, it was a complicated film.”

By the Sea, which comes from an original story also written by Jolie, is set in the mid-1970s and features Jolie and Pitt as a couple who try to rescue their fraying relationship as they travel across France. Pitt plays Roland, an American writer, while Jolie takes on the role of Vanessa, a former dancer.

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Angelina Jolie directing By the Sea

“My character was quite weak, and as a director you have to be quite decisive and strong,” Jolie explained. “It was very schizophrenic to have to be very in command and very sure of everything, and in a moment, flip to the person that knows nothing and is an emotional mess. I was having trouble balancing it.”

There’s also, of course, the little matter of acting beside her husband for the first time since 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith — the film that famously brought them together. ”It feels a little daunting,” Jolie told the UK’s Radio Times last week. “We haven’t worked together for 10 years. But all the reasons why people say we should be scared of it, we feel that’s exactly why we have to do this, because we can. So we’re going to go boldly.”

Photos: Fame Flynet