Angelina Jolie Claimed She And Brad Pitt Were Only Friends Until Jennifer Aniston Split

There were rumors swirling for months that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were hooking up despite him still being married to Jennifer Aniston at the time. However, Angelina Jolie has always maintained that things were strictly platonic between them until Pitt split from Aniston.

Per Glamour, Pitt and Aniston had been married for four years when he met Jolie on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith in the summer of 2004. Passion and sparks immediately flew — both on and off set — along with rumor and speculation. Just months later, Pitt and Aniston announced they were over, and Aniston filed for divorce in March 2005.

Watching your ex move on with their new squeeze is bad enough if you're all nobodies. So you can only imagine how painful and torturous it must be when it's plastered all over supermarket checkouts, television stations, and newsstands — as was Pitt and Jolie's relationship. The new two were snapped, strolling on a deserted Kenyan beach with Maddox Jolie-Pitt in April. Then, in July, they were frolicking all over W magazine in a 60-page "Domestic Bliss" spread, playing happy families with an army of mini-Brangelinas. Pitt had developed the idea for the shoot way before he and Jolie went public with their romance. It's easy to see why Aniston remarked to Vanity Fair that Pitt lacked a "sensitivity chip." It's also easy to see why eyes rolled when Angelina Jolie claimed she and Brad Pitt were only friends until after his Jennifer Aniston split.

Rumors that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were getting hot and heavy on the set of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" were all over the tabloids. The Sun (via Vulture) claimed, "Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made so much noise during a hotel romp that other guests thought they had been attacked by wild animals." Not so, though, according to Jolie, who insists she and Brad were only friends until after he split from Jenifer Aniston.

In an interview with Vogue (via People), Jolie insisted that she hadn't known much about Pitt's personal life when they met. "But it was clear he was with his best friend," Jolie said shadily. She claimed that she'd not been looking for love and that she and Brad were just "very, very good friends" for "a long time" after filming ended. "We spent a lot of time contemplating and thinking and talking about what we both wanted in life and realized that we wanted very, very similar things," Jolie said. "And then life developed in a way where we could be together, where it felt like something we would do, we should do," she continued.

Per People, despite the barrage of reports, photos flooding in, and Pitt starting the legal proceedings to legally adopt Jolie's children, Maddox and Zahara Jolie-Pitt, their relationship status was only officially out of the bag after Jolie announced in January 2006 that she was pregnant with their first bio-baby, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.

Angelina Jolie insisted that nothing romantic developed between her and Brad Pitt until he split from Jennifer Aniston. "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive," she insisted during a "Today" interview. "I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."

Still, Jolie told the New York Times she couldn't wait for their kids to be old enough to watch "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" because "not a lot of people get to see a movie where their parents fell in love." For his part, Pitt told Rolling Stone that the flick was his favorite that he had ever made, "Because you know... six kids. Because I fell in love."

Meanwhile, Aniston had been left reeling. "The world was shocked, and I was shocked," she told Vanity Fair about her reaction to the pics of Pitt, Jolie, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt strolling on a Kenyan Beach in April 2005. "I can't say it was one of the highlights of my year." She shared that just before "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" began filming, she'd met Jolie for the first time. "It was on the lot of 'Friends' — I pulled over and introduced myself," Aniston revealed. "I said, 'Brad is so excited about working with you. I hope you guys have a really good time.'"