Angelina Jolie Admits She and Brad Pitt Went Through Rough Patch During Filming of 'By the Sea'

'There was a heaviness probably during that situation that carried on and it wasn't because of the film,' Jolie reveals about working with her then-husband on the movie that she wrote and directed.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt worked on a movie together for the second time before they split in 2016. Titled "By the Sea" (2015), the marital drama tells a story about a couple of over ten years going through a rough patch in which they are having trouble communicating. And it turns out that the then couple had been going through problem in their real lives during the filming of the movie.

In a new interview, the 42-year-old actress, who wrote and directed the film, admits that she made the movie as a means to "communicate" with Pitt. "We had met working together and we worked together well," she says in The Hollywood Reporter's podcast, "Awards Chatter". "I wanted us to do some serious work together, I thought it would be a good way for us to communicate. In some ways it was, and in some ways we learned some things. But there was a heaviness probably during that situation that carried on and it wasn't because of the film."

But did it work? "In some ways it was, and in some ways we learned some things," she reveals. "But there was a heaviness probably during that situation that carried on and it wasn't because of the film. It was something that we were dealing...things happen for different reasons, and things...why did I write that exact piece? Why did we feel that way when we made it? I'm not sure."

On what inspired her to write such sad movie for their second film together, the Oscar-winning actress shares, "My life has been... I've had many, many extraordinary very fortunate things happen and it's also been many things over the years that had been challenging. So that wasn't a particular time when I wrote it...I had my mastectomy right before I had 'Unbroken'. Over the span of that decade, I did lose my mother. I did have my mastectomy, and I did then have an ovarian cancer scare and have that surgery as well, and other things of course that happened in life that you go through. A piece of art can be something that's healing or something that's difficult. I don't know."

"I'm glad we did that film because we did explore something together," she adds. "Whatever it was maybe it didn't solve certain things, but we did communicate something that needed to be communicated to each other."

Jolie and Pitt met when working on 2005's action comedy "Mr and Mrs Smith". They tied the knot in August 2014 after more than eight years together. Two years later, they announced their separation. They have six children.