Despite the damaged, roller coaster of a relationship Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are portraying in their new film By the Sea, Jolie recently shared details of the couple’s whirlwind legal marriage, their so-called honeymoon, and how they’re staying a strong family unit while working together.
Though Jolie, 40, and Pitt, 51, were married during formal, private wedding ceremony with their brood of six children in France on August 23, 2014, they were actually legally married in California shortly beforehand.
As Jolie shared in an interview with the New York Times, “The ceremony was in France, but we had to do things legally in California.”
But her tying the knot swiftly stateside and formally in the French chateau did not change her outlook on their relationship. Rather, it was when they agreed to raise children together that the two really made their vows, Jolie said.
“For me, the big moment was when [we] signed the [joint adoption] papers for Maddox and Zahara. That was a decision to parent together, to commit to being a part of each other’s lives for the rest of my life.” Jolie explained in the interview, “So [marriage] wasn’t close in comparison. In a way, it was very casual.”
How does one of the leading Hollywood power couple’s marriage become casual? That’s where the formalities of their marriage license and “ceremony” come into play. Without being able to marry legally on French soil, the couple had to wed in the states, quickly.
Jolie recalled the day her and Pitt got legally married saying, “One day I was in the edit room, and [Brad] was doing something and an assistant said, ‘You have to sign some papers.’ So we came back and between meetings we were told, ‘Here’s your license.’?
A few moments after receiving their papers, to Jolie’s surprise, the couple was informed that the judge already present, waiting to marry them.
“Then someone said, ‘The judge is outside.’ We both said, ‘What do you mean, the judge is outside?’”
In an instant, Jolie and Pitt were married. It happened informally, without paparazzi present, in whatever they happened to be wearing a the time.
Jolie said, “Then the judge came in, this lovely guy, and at some point, Brad said, ‘Shouldn’t we be standing up?’ The judge said, ‘No.’ Then suddenly we realized we were married, in the most unceremonial way possible.”
As for the couple’s honeymoon, shortly after their family-centric ceremony in France in August, they traveled to Malta to begin filming By the Sea – the film which Jolie wrote, directed, produced and stars in. This is the first movie since 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith that both Jolie and Pitt are starring in together.
“A few days into filming I thought: This is such a bad idea. What was I thinking? This is going to destroy us before we’ve even gotten started.” she said about starring in the movie alongside hubby, Pitt. Despite Jolie and Pitt’s “very, very stable” relationship, the couple’s characters are “deeply troubled,” and the story was inspired by Jolie’s loss of her mother from cancer.
“But by the time we got to the end of the film, we’d argued, challenged each other, disappointed each other, had good days, bad days, all of it.” Jolie said, “We’d pushed through, learned something about each other, found a new working relationship and came to like the idea of ‘Yeah, it gets really bad, but you work it out.’”
When asked if she was concerned about audiences seeing the sex, fights, and raw emotions of the film’s characters and linking them to their off-screen relationship, Jolie told the New York Times, “I think you have to accept that. But if people think these are our particular issues, well, that’s wrong. But if they want to think we have terrible fights, are imperfect, have insecurities and can be depressed and emotional, of course that’s true.”
“We have problems, arguments. We are two very human, flawed people. And I think that’s a good thing to show,” she said of herself and Pitt.
As for Jolie’s thoughts on gender discrimination in her second time in a directorial role she said, “I don’t want people saying, ‘Should we get a female director?’ I want to hear, ‘Should we get a great director for this movie?’ But I’m the first female director that Brad’s ever worked with. That doesn’t seem right when you think about it.”
By the Sea is set to debut in theaters on November 13, 2015.
