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I want to preface this post by saying that I had no intentions of writing about this topic, mainly because this is a Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie website. It is not, on the other hand, a Jennifer Aniston site. While she was married to Brad for a long time, she is not a part of his life anymore and I have little reason to write about her; that goes all ways. I don’t make a habit of writing about Gwyneth Paltrow, Juliette Lewis, Billy Bob Thorton, or anyone else they were involved with. I write about Brad Pitt, I write about Angelina Jolie, and I write about things that involve the two of them.
However, I can’t remember the last time I’ve had my inbox overflowing. So many people have emailed me to ask what I think of the new Vogue cover where Jennifer Aniston declares that Angelina Jolie was “very uncool” in regards to her comments to Vogue a year or so earlier when she said that she couldn’t wait to get to work on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
I am so hesitant to delve into this topic because I don’t want a war to explode in my comments, but ask and ye shall receive. Let’s discuss it then.
In the new December 2008 issue of Vogue, Jennifer Aniston was asked, point blank, her thoughts on Angeline Jolie. Never mind the fact that I think the article’s author really needs to let go of news that is four years old, but Jennifer did respond to some of the questions.
On being bothered that Angelina recounted a detailed timeline of how she fell in love with Brad Pitt on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith: “There was stuff printed there that was definitely from a time when I was unaware that it was happening. I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool.
On if she ever speaks to Brad: “[We've exchanged] a few very kind hellos … and congratulations on your babies… [We] had an amicable split … The marriage didn’t work out.”
People have emailed me to ask how I feel about it. Well, really, how should I feel about it? I’m not involved in any way, I don’t know every detail, I don’t know what happened behind closed doors. I’ll tell you what I believe though.
1. I believe that Brad and Angelina truly did not become involved intimately while he was still married to Jennifer. When they separated, yes, but when they were still fully wed, I truly do believe that there was nothing physical. If you look at photos from the Mr. & Mrs. Smith premiere, they don’t even stand and pose together like co-stars usually do. To me, that’s striking – they were avoiding being together in any way at all.
2. I believe they fell in love while they worked together. And you know what? It happens. You can’t help who you fall in love with and you can’t dictate when it happens. People fall in love with other people all the time and it’s usually beyond your control. What they COULD control was whether they acted – officially – on it. And you can see point one on that – I don’t think they did. But regardless of how much you can control what you do and do not do, you can’t control what you do and do not feel.
3. I believe that Brad and Jennifer’s marriage was doomed to fail. Regardless of Angelina’s existence, I don’t believe that marriage would have lasted even if Mr. & Mrs. Smith had never happened. If their marriage was strong it would have been moot. If there were problems below the surface, they weren’t because of Angelina.
4. I believe that Jennifer Aniston has every right to feel the way she does – as I said, you can’t always control what you feel. I don’t believe anyone can “steal” someone’s husband or wife – they aren’t property, they’re people who make choices. But either way, Jennifer lost her husband when they separated and subsequently divorced. She lost someone she loved very much. In the real, non-Hollywood world, if you don’t have children you can divorce someone and pretend they don’t exist, but Brad and Angelina are A-list celebrities on the cover of countless magazines and on websites. It would be hard for her to ignore their relationship unless she lived in the woods for a few years.
I get Jennifer’s position. I really do. I think that if she wants to move on – as she has hinted in the past – that she may have been wiser to refuse to discuss it. But, again, you can’t always control how you feel. She’s a human being just like all of us and she was hurt. I’ve been hurt. You’ve probably been hurt too. It’s not a great feeling to have your feelings hurt or your heart broken.
So there you go. In answer to the question as to how I feel about this new Vogue cover and interview… well I feel ambivalent mostly because I don’t think it’s news, and I don’t think she’s wrong to be hurt by what Angelina said – just like I don’t think it’s wrong that Brad Pitt and Angelina fell in love, stood back and waited, and then acted on it when the marriage ended.
I apologize, I am coming down with yet another cold and I’m hoping that this post isn’t disjointed as a result, but I think that it captures the essence of my feelings on this long-drawn-out triangle.
Since I was asked to discuss it, I ask you to discuss it too. However, as always I request respect. Please respect me, respect this site, respect each other, respect Brad and Angelina, and yes – respect Jennifer Aniston too. Debate is always okay as long as it’s not nasty or meant strictly to bait nastiness. I’ve never kept it a secret that I also like Jennifer. I’m a bigger fan of Angelina and of Brad, but I never missed a single episode of Friends and I’ve seen most of her movies. And like I mentioned – she’s still a human being with feelings no matter what your opinion of her is.
So let’s discuss the article, but let’s keep it clean and respectable like we always do!
Ready, set, go!
Image: Newscom
(source)
651 days ago
UNDER MOD:
X quotes – Vogue 2008, Vanity Fair 2005, Vogue 2008, Vanity Fair 2005.
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651 days ago
Fan of all three, it must be hard for you. You can’t assume that we who say X needs to get over it have never been hurt like that. I’ve been cheated on many times and others have posted that they’ve been cheated on too. Speaking from my own life experience (56 years at the end of this month) and 30 years work experience in the mental health field, X seems stuck in the denial/anger stages of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). IMO, X will never achieve true, long-lasting happiness until she completes those stages and emotional separation from Brad. She’s young, beautiful and talented in her own right. I can’t believe she would want to spend the rest of her life without her own identity but just known as the ex-Mrs. Brad Pitt, even though some of her fans and the tabloids might want her to. Or maybe she wants to.
X has not been silent for a long time. I suggest you read the quotes I posted above from 2005, 2007 and 2008 for comparison. X has a right to make any comment she wants, and so does Angelina, So X shouldn’t be upset at anything Angelina says either, especially 4 years and 6 kids after X and Brad broke up, especially since X makes a big deal about how amicable the divorce was and it was 100 years ago, praising Brad to the skies while very pointedly not including Angelina and their in X’ well-wishes. That would *truly* have proved X’ sincerity and magnanimity.
We humans often forget that just because things are the way they are now that they weren’t always this way and that they aren’t always going to be this way – just look at technology and medicine. Same thing with love and marriage. I don’t know when the vow “until death do you part” started and if it’s universal around the world and in all religions. And the age of death is different in different eras and in different countries. I think at one time the average life expectancy in the U.S. was in the 30s, then 50s, and now 70s or 80s, lots of people live over 100 now – and people are divorcing in their 70s and 80s. It’s easy to stay married (affairs or no affairs) when divorce is illegal (but that does contribute to the murder rate), when life is shorter, when women had no choice (couldn’t work to support themselves) and when there was a stigma.
Marrying for romantic love as a concept is just a couple of centuries old. For thousands of years royalty, nobility, gentry, the landed classes, the bourgeoisie, and middle classes married for political alliances, power, more land, and wealth; and the classes below them – serfs, peasants, farmers, and working class had arranged marriages. In some parts of the world, arranged marriages still happen. Passion and romantic love were found outside marriage.
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651 days ago
That should have been “very pointedly excluding Angelina and their CHILDREN in X’ well-wishes, thus showing she was generous, not petty and harboring a grudge.”
I should also note that finding love and passion outside marriage was a right reserved exclusively for men – some women did it too, but the penalty when caught was fatal, death by stoning, decapitation and other means. And women could also be framed when they became inconvenient to their husbands.
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651 days ago
Sims, Angelina doesn’t go around pretending she’s spotless. That’s the rap her detractors try to put on her. She has freely admitted her mistakes – she doesn’t disown or excuse them. Shouldn’t Brad and Billy Bob be the ones to apologize? (Maybe they already have, I don’t know.)
Please see Joyce McFadden’s article: The Other Woman Can’t Break Up Your Marriage. It’s Impossible. It can be summed up in these sentences: “Obviously whoever participates in an affair is accountable for their actions, but that’s not the same thing as being accountable for the end of a marriage. If a husband is having an affair, it’s the husband who threatens the break up the marriage. If a wife is having an affair, it’s the wife.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joyce-mcfadden/the-other-woman-cant-brea_b_143364.html
And how would Angelina apologize exactly, “I’m sorry your fiancé/husband fell out of love with you and fell in love with me. We didn’t mean to fall in love.” Wouldn’t that be twisting the knife and digging it deeper in the case of X who’s still carrying the torch for Brad, and reopening a wound for Dern who’s happy with a new family? Wouldn’t they and everyone else think it’s presumptuous and outrageous? Angelina would be crucified. Apologies don’t always heal wounds, sometimes it’s just pouring salt into them.
As I said in an earlier post, no one has power over how I feel unless I give it to them. They may hurt me at first, but they can’t keep hurting me unless I hang on to the hurt and don’t let it go. I can hurt, I can heal, and I can move on – whether they’ve made amends or not. I can live a future life of happiness if Idon’t drag a ball and chain of a past full of hurts with me.
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651 days ago
UNDER MOD:
Sims, Angelina doesn’t go around pretending she’s spotless…
Shouldn’t Brad and Billy Bob be the ones to apologize?…
“If a husband is having an affair, it’s the husband who threatens the break up the marriage. If a wife is having an affair, it’s the wife.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joyce-mcfadden/the-other-woman-cant-brea_b_143364.html
Apologies don’t always heal wounds, sometimes it’s just pouring salt into them.
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650 days ago
I’m with Ligaya. Unlike her, I have heard the miscarriage rumors. However, I only heard them once. I didn’t believe them then and I don’t believe them now. I don’t remember the exact tab that printed those rumors, but I do remember that it was one of the most unreliable ones (I’m not sure, but I think it was either Star or The National Enquirer. While both have been right about a few things, they almost always get stuff wrong. Even when they DO get things right, it’s usually by accident.).
Also, like Ligaya, I think the miscarriage thing would have been re-hashed several times by now if there was any truth to it. Same goes for the thing about Jen wanting kids as soon as they were married but Brad wanting to wait.
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650 days ago
Ligaya- I agree with your comments about Angie apologizing. I also want to add that, while I don’t know exactly what happened between Angie and BBT while he was still with Dern, I can’t see what Angie would have to apologize for in the case of Jen.
All three involved have said there was no physical cheating, and Brad, at least (I don’t know if Angie has or not), has stated that, basically, while he and Angie DID fall in love on the set of MMS, they didn’t act on those feelings until he and Jen had seperated (that’s also why I don’t think Angie’s Vogue comment in 2007 contradicted her and Brad’s earlier statement that “nothing happened”. It’s pretty obvious that, by “nothing happened”, they meant there was no affair.).
Therefore, all Angie would have to apoligize for is falling in love with Brad…and why should a person have to apologize for that? As other pittwatchers have said, you can’t control whether or not you fall in love with someone. Feelings aren’t a switch you can turn on and off whenever you want!
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648 days ago
Very interesting comments, unlike on some other forums where all there is are unpleasant ‘attacks’ directed at either Jennifer or Angelina depending upon which ’side’ you are on. Brad seems to escape pretty much unscathed :for some reason the vitriol is mostly reserved for the two ladies involved.
The reports I mentioned previously, could be truths or lies – unless catergorically substantiated by the people involved, who knows for sure? It seems to depend upon whose ’side’ you’re on, as to which stories you believe.
For instance, I have seen people state, with absolute certainty, on forums that Angelina set her cap at Brad and went all out to get him, teasing him and flirting – this is not a substantiated fact, just an opinion which became, in the poster’s mind, true.
I have also seen comments stating, again with absolute certainty, that Jennifer was having an affair and that’s why the marriage failed- again this is not a substantiated fact, again this is an opinion which became, in the poster’s mind, true.
I suppose, if you’re on Jennifer’s side, you’ll believe the former and, if you’re on Angelina’s side, you’ll believe the latter – yet, it’s more often than not, nothing more than mischief making. They are frequently just ’stories’ written about individuals to whip things up and I personally believe that certain parts of the media won’t be happy until they get Jennifer and Angelina involved in a full on slanging match.
To clarify, the alleged miscarriage reports etc were several years ago, I believe they were in a couple of the UK papers and ‘celebrity’ mags. The reports about Jennifer wanting kids and Brad not were around the time they married: I am afraid I can’t recall what they appeared in but comments about them have been mentioned on various forums which sprung up after their separation and divorce.
My personal opinion is that none of us know anything for definite, (unless it’s a direct quote form the people involved) we only know what we choose to believe.
I do not believe that Jennifer deserves to be disrespected/slatted/pitied/ridiculed/dismissed any more than Angelina does – I also think that if Angelina is entitled to voice her opinion, as and when she sees fit to do so, then Jennifer is too. That’s only fair, isn’t it.
Thank you all for your comments in response to mine and for the very interesting discussion points raised here by posters.
Peace to all.
x
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648 days ago
I’ve read somewhere here that “The woman lost her husband and was humiliated for the world to see”.WOW! Why was Jennifer humiliated? Since when getting divorced is humiliating? Painful, yes, but humiliating? And why was only Jennifer humiliated and not Brad too, since divorce is so humiliating and it involved the two of them? Whatever…
So, let’s see what Angie said: “We went to gun training together, which is an amazing thing to do for your actors to get them to know each other. The trust you suddenly have because there’s a live weapon…So because of that we became very aware of teamwork and trust so it’s kind of the perfect thing to make us a team…We were brought up together to do all these crazy things and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized God, I cannot wait to get to work. Whether it was a shooting scene or arguing about a scene or gun practice or dance class, anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork”. So no matter what people (or Jen) want to make out of this, it is clear – at least for me – that she was so excited to go to work because of the great collaboration she had with Brad on set and the fun things that came out of it and not because she was having sex with him every morning instead of breakfast :P
Further more, when she is asked to comment about the situation back then, she says (after a long pause observed by the interviewer) “I’m only being cautious because it involves so many people…We all go through these things in our lives – children, divorces, marriages, different relationships – and anybody can have an opinion about what is right or who’s evil or what they think is really secretly happening. But the reality is that it didn’t helped anybody involved – even if it was the person you thought you were taking sides with – to exploit it so much.” So she is cautious about this subject when it’s the case. That’s why I strongly believe that if that “God, I cannot wait to go to work” implied anything more than a great friendship and collaboration, she wouldn’t have said it. When people feel guilty about something, they tend to hide it. Of course, that friendship later developed into something more. But it was LATER! Even Angie says that “It took until, really, the end of the shot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we’d earlier allowed ourselves to believe.” So they both felt a strong connection and after talking so much on the set and discovering that they want similar things in life (as Angie says) they began to feel more than friendship towards each other, but they did not allowed themselves to act on those feelings. Why? Because Brad was married, that’s why. Falling in love is not something that you can control. Acting on it, it is if you are strong enough. And they were.
Ok, so what I have done here is pure speculation, because the only people on this earth that know what really happened are Brad and Angelina (and probably 2 or 3 more). But until it is proved otherwise, I choose to believe them that nothing happened until Brad filled for divorce. Of course, Jen is entitled to her feelings. She, as anyone else, has the right to fell and has the right to feel for as long as it takes. But this doesn’t mean that Angie doesn’t have the right to fully be Brad’s partner, to express her feelings about him and to remember how it all began for them. She has nothing to be ashamed or cautious about because it was nothing bad. If Jennifer expects Angelina to always be cautious and to have her in mind every time she talks about Brad, then she is way off line. And if you ask me, it is 100 times more “uncool” to make that statement (Jen’s statement, I mean) after four years. It totally seems that she is not over it yet. It’s like saying “I don’t care for how long you have been together, how many kids you have, how your life is, you still have to consider me”. It would have been more “cool” to just say something like “common, four years have passed. I’m over it. Get over it, too”. But her answer clearly shows that she still dwells on it and she probably feels that Brad and Angie owe her silence or something. As I have said, feeling that is her problem and her right, but showing to the world that almost 4 years and 6 kids later she is still not over it……she should have known better. As a woman, I consider this much more humiliating than divorce.
And one more thing. To all those Brad fans that say that Angie stole him from Jen. Excuse me, but to me this is like saying that Brad is kind of retarded or stupid. That he is no way capable of thinking for himself. If he wouldn’t have wanted to be with Angelina I am positive that he wouldn’t have been. No one can be forced to do something that he doesn’t want to. Angelina didn’t put a gun to his head and said “be with me or I’ll blow your brains” so quit making him the victim and her the villain. They both took the decision of being together and I am sure that they’ve tried as much as possible not to hurt anybody.
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606 days ago
I have never been a ja fan, nor bp or aj. If you play in a movie and I can forget for awhile who you are and get into the movie, then I think you’ve done a great job. I am so sorry that jen can’t seem to get over the split between her and brad no matter how many times she says it, but, Brad and Angie love each other. Maybe they will stay together who knows. I don’t think she slept with Brad when he was still married to Jen. I think If Jen and his relationship had been strong and he was still in love with his wife, he would still be there now. People fall out of love everyday. How many vacations can you go on trying to fill-up your life? If she’s in love the she shouldn’t care if aj shouted from the roof top that she loves this man. I would just say more power to her and I wish her luck!!!. I’m happy and I’m glad everyone else is too.
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553 days ago
I am an italian lady that adores Brad and Angelina for their films. I respect Jennifer Aniston and in Italy she is only known for the “Friends” series which I much enjoyed. I’d like to congratulate the admin and the visitors of this site for the respect they show on their comments. Very intelligent and mature people. My comment is that maybe Jennifer should have simply answered “that’s history can we get on with the rest of the interview” and not becuase I think she isn’t hurt but simply cause media are sharks and they will carry on this thing. I can’t stand the way journalists distort everything. It is much created.
By the way I really think their was no intrigate affair going on between Brad and Angie cause in the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” you certainly don’t see it. They were probably sexually atttracted but hell who wouldn’t be with the pair of them but I’m sure they are not animals and kept control on that…. They probably got to know each other slowly and then realized they were in love but that does happen in real life and they are real people. It’s sad for Jen but she must move on… I like this site cause it’s not full of BS like in other places where comments are really disrespectful towards all 3 of them.
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