Angelina Jolie has revealed that she received numerous warnings from friends and family before making By the Sea, the 2015 film she wrote, directed, and starred in alongside then-husband Brad Pitt. The film, which centers around a couple struggling with the breakdown of their marriage, was shot shortly after their real-life wedding and raised eyebrows due to its highly personal nature.
Jolie admitted that many close to the couple questioned their decision to make such an intimate film. “A lot of friends of ours thought it was a really… they didn’t say a bad idea, but they asked us a few times if we were sure we wanted to do it,” she shared. Given the film’s premise—a fictional portrayal of a couple on the brink of divorce—it seemed risky to depict the couple’s own struggles on-screen.
Despite the concerns, Jolie and Pitt went ahead with the project. By the Sea turned out to be an experimental drama, yet the reception was far from what they had anticipated. Critics and audiences largely shrugged at the film, and it barely recouped a third of its budget at the box office.
Looking back, it’s easy to see why her friends were cautious. The film, often seen as a vanity project, now stands as a strange, fictional snapshot of a relationship that later dissolved in real life. Jolie and Pitt’s eventual, very public split made the film’s narrative even more poignant in hindsight, with its portrayal of a troubled marriage taking on an eerie resonance.
Despite the backlash, Jolie has continued to focus on smaller, intimate stories as a director, with a focus on humanitarian themes and personal reflection in films like In the Land of Blood and Honey and First They Killed My Father.
