14 DAY TRIAL // We’re yet to see footage from “By the Sea,” directed and written by Angelina Jolie, and starring Angelina and real-life husband Brad Pitt, but buzz online has it that it might turn out to be a solid contender in the upcoming Oscars 2015 race.
She’s promoting it in a new interview with DGA, in which she talks about her love of directing, which is inversely proportional to her passion for acting, working with Brad again, under different circumstances than the first time, and how this is an art film.
Angelina Jolie never really loved acting
For years, Jolie was among the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, even at those times when what she put out fell short of meeting expectations with the public and the critics. Just think of “The Tourist,” which also starred Johnny Depp and was deemed a phenomenal flop and the worst movie to come out that year.
Even though she never stopped being in-demand, which, in turn, allowed her to pick only the projects she wanted, Angelina never made a secret of her desire to step behind the camera.
Now that she has, properly so, (her “Unbroken,” which came out last year, actually got massive Oscar buzz but it didn’t materialize in a Best Director nomination), she can be honest about how she feels about acting.
Hint: she doesn’t really like it.
“What surprised me about directing is how much I loved it and how happy I am to be on the set,” she says. “I love coming to work in the morning. What I realized is that I never loved acting. I don’t love being in the hair and makeup chair. I don’t [love] being in costume. To me the strangest thing is that I’ve just spent the majority of my life in one aspect of this business, and because I was fortunate enough to become successful I never questioned whether I felt at home and found out later in life that I’m much happier directing.”
If she ever made a statement that came the closest to “I’m retiring from acting,” this one is probably it.
Working with Brad, making an art movie
She describes “By the Sea” as the kind of art movie she wishes she’d have been offered back in her glory acting days, but never did.
And how about working with Brad again? Jolie says that, unlike when they did “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” this movie is about drama and marital problems, so there was a lot of tension on set.
They shot it during their honeymoon, which only made things even weirder, because they had to go to dark places and bring up bad stuff from there, so they could get into character.
Half-jokingly, Jolie describes the atmosphere on set as that inside of a house where kids have to witness their parents fighting, while pretending there’s nothing wrong. Perhaps even weirder was directing Brad in all the scenes in which he has to act as if he’s resentful of her.
For all the Brangeloonies, this DGA interview is a must-read.
