Angelina Jolie Once Called Brad Pitt to Warn Him About Her Nude Scene in This Film
Angelina Jolie has usually had little to no problem disrobing for a film if the role required it. But there was one film where her nude scene didn’t come off the way she thought it would. Caught off guard by the shot, Jolie felt she had to warn her husband at the time and her family about the movie.
Angelina Jolie was caught by surprise with her nude scenes for this film
Jolie already starred in a few movies where she had to bare her physique for the camera. But ironically, one of the nude scenes that might have caught her off guard the most was an animated feature. Beowulf was a 2007 fantasy film about the hero Beowulf who attempts to fight an evil presence in his country.
But unlike other animated features, Jolie’s performance wasn’t just solely about voice acting. Jolie and her co-stars found themselves physically acting out the scenes in the movie. With wet suits on and dots on their faces tracking their movements, their performances would then be inserted into a computer. This would bring to life an animated version of these actors that were all but identical to the original copies.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be so weird, all of us actors with these dots on our faces, in these wetsuit-type costumes, with no props or sets,’” Jolie once said according to The Morning Call. “But what it really does is strip everything down to the essentials of performing, especially in the scenes between Crispin and me. They were just pure amazing emotion.”
The Salt star had even planned for her kids at the time to see it, but she underestimated how real the performance would look. So when she saw herself on screen, she felt she had to prepare her husband and family for what they saw.
“I got a little shy,” she said. “There were certain moments where I actually called home, just to explain that the fun movie that I had done that was digital animation was, in fact, a little different than we expected. I was really surprised that I felt that exposed.”
Brad Pitt once vowed to never do nude scenes again because of his family
Pitt has also shot a few raunchy scenes in his career. But starting a family changed the kinds of choices the actor made with his movies.
“I think about everything I do now, ‘My kids are going to see it when they grow up and how are they going to feel?’ But they know me as a dad. And I hope they’ll just think I’m a pretty damn good actor,” Pitt once told Entertainment Weekly.
So Pitt was pretty adamant that it was unlikely for him to take part in any more steamy scenes due to his children’s influence.
“I don’t want to be embarrassed when my kids get old enough to see my films,” Pitt once told BBC (via People). “I can’t see any more nude scenes [in my career.]”
Angelina Jolie once called her love scenes with Brad Pitt strange compared to others
Jolie and Pitt have acted out two love scenes for audiences in their career. The first was in the feature Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But the pair would eventually reunite onscreen for another love scene in the film By the Sea. They did the dark drama while they were still married, which made her love scene stand out from others.
“I’ve done sex scenes before. But this is obviously different,” she once told Entertainment Weekly (via Nylon). “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 love to you…In front of a bunch of other men with cameras.”
Jolie also directed the film, which added to the awkwardness of the experience.
“It was just so weird. I couldn’t get out of the bathtub to get to the monitor because the director is naked. We’re artists and want to be free, but Brad—it’s his wife,” she added. “He was on towel duty. He’d hold the towel over me. Love scenes are strange anyway, but when you’re doing a love scene with a person that you really have sex with? The only way to get through it was for us to all talk about the absurdity of it and make sure no one was feeling awkward. We made as many jokes as possible.”