Angelina Jolie Quashes Rumors of a Secret Wedding and Admits to Fears About Writing and Directing Her First Feature Film

It was a secret project, something she did for herself, when no one was photographing, suggesting, or looking over her shoulder. Every evening, after the children had gone to bed, after the nannies had called it quits and Brad had gone off to wherever movie stars go when the world sleeps, after the house and settled into a mellow blue hum, Angelina Jolie fired up her computer and went to work, tentatively at first, then blazing away. She poured everything she knew into the story, the sting of first love, the winding streets of old European cities, the horrors of war, some of it witnessed firsthand during her work for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Within a month, she had completed her first screenplay, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which, this December, becomes the feature directorial debut of Angelina Jolie.

As she knew nothing of screenwriting software like Final Draft, that first script was a mess of indents and jerry-rigged margins, a homemade cookie of a thing, which did not prevent Brad Pitt, the father of Jolie’s six children, from grabbing it. "He took it on a trip," Jolie told me, "then called and said, 'You know, honey, it’s not that bad.'"

To read the full article, check out the October 2011 newsstand issue of Vanity Fair