Angelina Jolie Calls Shooting New Film With Brad Pitt Their ‘Honeymoon’

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are known as the couple who makes the most out of their life. The two always make time for family even while they’re busy filming on location. That said, they also seem like the family that’s doing five million things at once, so it isn’t surprising that Angelina Jolie’s third directorial project turned into her honeymoon with husband Brad Pitt.

Instead of just relaxing with her hubby, like other couples do after exchanging vows, Jolie decided to throw herself in front of the camera and behind it for her new drama By the Sea. She and her newly minted husband played a couple going through a very rough period in their marriage — sounds like a dream honeymoon, right? For Jolie, it seems like it actually was. The pair and their six children spent weeks shooting the drama on the Maltese island of Gozo.

Annie Leibovitz really captured Angelina Jolie’s beautiful family for the November Issue of Vogue. pic.twitter.com/ECulW7U8fr

— NICO (@IAMFASHlON) October 16, 2015

That said, Jolie was quick to tell Vogue that her dramatic film with Brad, who she co-stars with, isn’t a true to life story.

“It’s not autobiographical. Brad and I have our issues, but if the characters were even remotely close to our problems we couldn’t have made the film.”

Not only did Jolie direct By the Sea, but she also wrote the screenplay as well. This is also the first time she’s being billed as Angelina Jolie-Pitt. According to Today, By the Sea “follows a husband and wife in the 1970s who resolve their marital issues while visiting a French resort — the ‘crazy one’ for years.”

Jolie explained the drive behind taking on a huge project like this at a time where she was at her happiest.

“As artists we wanted something that took us out of our comfort zones. Just being raw actors It’s not the safest idea, but life is short.”

Around this time, Jolie also decided to go through a preventative double mastectomy after it turned out that she carried the same genetic mutation that caused her late mother Marcheline Bertrand’s breast cancer. In 2013, she has her breasts removed. Jolie wrote an op-ed in March of 2015 for the New York Times, explaining her decision to undergo these surgeries.

Annie Leibovitz really captured Angelina Jolie’s beautiful family for the November Issue of Vogue. pic.twitter.com/ECulW7U8fr — NICO (@IAMFASHlON) October 16, 2015

In the essay, Jolie said that the BRCA1 gene mutation meant that she was 87 percent more likely to get breast cancer and 50 percent risk of getting ovarian cancer. Jolie lost her mother, grandmother, and aunt to cancer, so the odds were pretty high.

The surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes was something that she thought about for a while, but after receiving a call from her doctor, she decided the surgery needed to happen sooner rather than later. The blood test that she had taken detected anomalies in the protein of her CA-125, which monitored any potential risks for ovarian cancer. Her tests revealed that she had markers that indicated early cancer.

In the piece, she writes, “I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt. I told myself to stay calm, to be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn’t live to see my children grow up and to meet my grandchildren.”

At the time, Jolie said she wrote the essay so other women at risk would know about the options involved. She stated that whatever information she would follow up with would be useful, which includes detailing any surgeries that she had as a preventative. The second time around, Jolie said she was preparing herself both physically and emotionally, as well as mapping out hormones for estrogen and progesterone replacement, which were other options.

Of those other options, she wrote, “Some women take birth control pills or rely on alternative medicines combined with frequent checks. There is more than one way to deal with any health issue. The most important thing is to learn about the options and choose what is right for you personally.”

Her essay was taken with much praise and some hesitance from some that found it too “surgery happy.” As for her next endeavor, By the Sea has an Oscar-friendly release date of November 13, 2015.

[Photo by Universal Studios]