Angelina Jolie Pitt in “By the Sea,” which she wrote, directed and stars in. Credit Universal Picture
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — During the filming of “By the Sea,” Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt — who play a depressed former dancer and her blocked novelist husband — had a go-to method for lightening an often somber mood on the set. “There were a lot of jokes about how nobody is ever going to want to be our neighbor again,” said Ms. Jolie Pitt, referring to how their characters often spy through a peephole on two lovers in the hotel room next door.