Angelina Jolie Once Got Into a Fight About Marriage on the Set of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt first worked together playing a married couple in the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But an argument Jolie had about marriage turned a little heated, to the point where brief changes needed to be made while filming.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ almost starred Brad Pitt and ex Gwyneth Paltrow
It may be difficult to imagine anyone else other than Pitt and Jolie portraying a married couple trying to kill each other. But Mr. and Mrs. Smith director Doug Liman once flirted with the idea of pitting Pitt against one of his exes. Liman thought the history between Pitt and his ex Gwyneth Paltrow would’ve translated nicely over to the big screen.
“Think of the spectacle of that. Fireworks could really fly in that situation. Because I’m sure there’s some s*** one of them was mad at the other one for. You find out what that baggage is and bring it out at the right moment, with the camera rolling,” Liman once told Entertainment Weekly.
But Liman was quickly told that might not have been a good idea.
“My producers were like, Look, that’s a great idea. But Brad is a human being. Even if he was game for it, it’s wrong for us to put him in a situation where he’s going to have to relive the demons of a relationship. That’s just a little bit too mad-scientist,” he said.
Other names floated around for Mrs. Smith such as Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. But Jolie was the clear favorite to take the role.
“Somehow Catherine Zeta-Jones’ name came up, but there wasn’t a lot of unanimity about casting her, as there was about Angelina Jolie,” he explained.
Angelina Jolie once got into a fight about marriage on the set of ‘Mr and Mrs. Smith’
Jolie was already married twice before being recruited for Liman’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Because of her experiences, the Oscar-winner felt she absorbed valuable lessons in marriage she couldn’t help bring into the film. This eventually led to her butting heads with Liman on the issue.
“Oh, we had troubles! The movie is all about marriage, and Doug would be saying, ‘Well, in my relationship this would happen….’ And we’d all say, ‘F**k you!’ and I’d say, ‘Well, in my marriage I would never do that,’” Jolie once told Empire (via Female First).
Because of this, there were times when Liman wouldn’t even speak to Jolie. This meant that Pitt himself had to temporarily direct some scenes that his ex-wife acted in. But in hindsight, Jolie didn’t feel the arguments she had with Liman were too bad.
“Everyone has an opinion, but that’s healthy,” she said.
Angelina Jolie would’ve loved to do a ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ sequel
Jolie once confided that she was very interested in revisiting the world of Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Pitt. But the problem was she and Pitt couldn’t find the right story.
“We did ask somebody to look into Mr. & Mrs. to see if they could crack a sequel, but there wasn’t anything original. It was just, ‘Well, they’re going to get married, or they’ve got kids, or they get separated.’ Never great,” she said in a 2010 interview with MTV News.
Still, Jolie didn’t rule out the possibility of acting alongside Pitt someday. But because of their family life, certain adjustments needed to be made in order for them to collaborate.
“We’ve talked about it. We’d have to figure out who’s going to watch the kids, but it’s really about finding the right thing, because we’ve looked,” she said.. “When you’re a couple, there are certain things people don’t want to see you do. It becomes too indulgent, too personal. I don’t think people want to see people who are really together intimate onscreen.”
Both of them would actually later re-team for the 2015 movie By the Sea.
