Angelina Jolie’s Strangest On-Set Experience: Directing a Love Scene With Brad Pitt—While Naked in a Bathtub

When Angelina Jolie set out to write, direct, and star in By the Sea (2015) alongside her then-husband Brad Pitt, she likely expected the film’s emotional depth to be the biggest challenge. What she didn’t anticipate, however, was how surreal and bizarre it would be to direct an intimate love scene—with herself in it—while fully nude and soaking in a bathtub.

In what she has since described as one of the weirdest things she’s ever done on set, Jolie found herself simultaneously playing a character, managing the emotional dynamics of a fraught scene, and directing Pitt’s performance—all while watching it unfold on an iPad from the tub. “It’s the strangest thing in the world to be lying naked in a bathtub with an iPad that’s showing you the shot outside, while your husband is at the door and you’re directing him to come in and make the scene work,” she told Vanity Fair.

By the Sea was already a deeply personal film for the actress-filmmaker. Set in a sleepy French seaside town, it explores the unraveling of a marriage—a sharp contrast to the then-public image of Jolie and Pitt’s real-life relationship. The couple took on the project shortly after their wedding, turning what should have been a honeymoon period into one of their most emotionally demanding collaborations.

Jolie’s willingness to inhabit such a vulnerable space—both physically and creatively—underscored her commitment to telling the story authentically. It also offered a behind-the-scenes look at just how complicated the director-actor dynamic can be when the director is also in the scene, emotionally exposed, and, in this case, literally naked.

The moment has since become a hallmark of Jolie’s fearless approach to filmmaking. It’s awkward, intense, and undeniably bizarre—but it’s also classic Jolie: bold, uncompromising, and unforgettable.