Brad Pitt and his ex-wife Jennifer Aniston didn’t star in any films together while they were still in a relationship. Still, the two were seen as the perfect couple for this romantic drama about time travel.
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were wanted for ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’
The Time Traveler’s Wife was a feature based on the best-selling novel of the same name. The film focused on a man with the ability to travel through time, and the impact it had on his life partner.
But years before the film was released, real-life former couple Pitt and Aniston were the ideal choices to star. The film’s screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin couldn’t help think about the former celebrity power couple while adapting the feature.
“I saw them as Henry and Clare. I just did,” Rubin said according to Access. “They just seemed like a perfect version of Henry and Clare.”
Part of Rubin’s reasoning was that Pitt and Aniston were on equal footing in terms of looks.
“I just found them equally attractive, equally competing in terms of the Hollywood sort of arena at that moment in time,” Rubin added. “They were as good a couple as you could find and I thought that I would’ve loved to have seen them together in a movie.”
Aniston and Pitt would divorce in 2005. Seeing as the film came out in 2009, the idea of the two collaborating for the project was a ship that had long sailed. Still, Pitt was attached to Time Traveler’s Wife in some form as he served as the film’s executive producer.
Jennifer Aniston didn’t think it was a good idea to do a movie with Brad Pitt while they were together
Aniston made a conscious decision to avoid doing movies with Pitt. The couple was enough in the spotlight as it was while they were together. But Aniston didn’t rule out the possibility.
“That would be just asking for trouble. You wouldn’t even see the movie, because it would be too much of a show in another way. Maybe years down the line, if the right thing came along, of course, we’d love to. Ocean’s Twenty, maybe,” Aniston once told BBC.
It was a sentiment that Pitt more or less agreed with.
“You look at past case studies of couples working together in films, and the odds are really against us,” Pitt said in an interview with News19.
Still, Pitt and Aniston collaborated with each other behind the scenes. For a short time, they owned their own production company Plan B. Pitt became the sole owner of the company after his divorce from Aniston. Plan B would help increase his net worth and expand his reach in the film industry.
Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana starred in ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’
The Time Traveler’s wife eventually ended up being led by Mean Girls alum Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. Unlike Aniston and Pitt, the two weren’t a real couple when they were cast. But they still managed to create a chemistry that seemed just as authentic. But even Bana didn’t know where their chemistry in the film came from.
“It’s great for us that we really like each other and we get along, but in reality you can have amazing chemistry in real life and it not work on the screen and vice versa,” he once told Collider. “I know for me I just tried not to worry about it. I really like Rachel and I think she’s a great actress and she’s very easy to get along with. I don’t know that there’s that much you can do about it.”
Years later, The Time Traveler’s Wife would be adapted into a television series which starred Theo James and Rose Leslie.
