Did life imitate art? Angelina Jolie hinted at marital strife after filming 2015’s By the Sea with her now-estranged husband, Brad Pitt.
As fans will likely recall, the pair played a troubled married couple in 1970s France. Shortly after Jolie and Pitt tied the knot in August 2014, the newlyweds jetted off to Malta for a month, where they shot the period drama while simultaneously celebrating their honeymoon.
The Academy Award–winning actress, 41, and the Fight Club actor, 52, thought it would be a good idea to go on a “working honeymoon,” but it wasn’t quite as blissful as they might have hoped.
“There were a few days when we thought it wasn’t the best idea,” Jolie, who wrote, directed, produced and costarred with Pitt in the low-budget project, told The Telegraph in November 2015. “There were days during filming last year when we were really worried, and it was hard.” (Check out the trailer for By the Sea in the video below.)
At the time, Jolie suggested that her romance with the hunky Oklahoma native could have faced some major setbacks if they hadn’t dated 12 years prior to becoming Mr. and Mrs.
“If we had married and were just starting a relationship it would have been a disaster,” she explained to the publication, “but because we have been together so long, we wanted to see how far we could push our relationship and our love and see if we can work together under very intense circumstances and with very complex issues and see if it would make us better.”
She added: “But at the end we came out of it thinking, ‘This was the best honeymoon,’ because the film says, ‘Whatever you go through, weather the storm and stick together.’”
Though they were able to at least temporarily repair their relationship after filming, Jolie candidly told The Telegraph that she and Pitt had experienced their fair share of relationship woes.
“Brad and I have our issues, but if the characters were even remotely close to our problems we couldn’t have made the film. To be clear: We have fights and problems like any other couple,” she said. “We have days when we drive each other absolutely mad and want space, but the problems in the movie aren’t our specific problems.”
As previously reported, the Maleficent star filed for divorce on Monday, September 19, citing irreconcilable differences for ending their two-year marriage. Jolie is seeking sole physical custody of the couple’s six children — Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 8 — and requested that Pitt only get joint legal custody. She is not asking for spousal support.
“Angelina Jolie Pitt has filed for dissolution of the marriage,” Jolie’s rep said in a statement to Us Tuesday, September 20. “This decision was made for the health of the family. She will not be commenting at this time, and asks that the family be given their privacy during this difficult time.”
