Angelina Jolie wanted to cut naked scenes

The 40-year-old director, who underwent a preventative double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery in February 2013 to reduce her chances of being developing breast cancer as it runs in her family, admits she worried about appearing naked in a bathtub in the new film, in which she also stars alongside husband Brad Pitt, as a result of the procedure.

She said: "There were lots of scenes I wanted to change or cut. I realised it was going to be me [naked] in that bathtub. But I told myself, put all of that aside. Like, you can't change or cut this scene because you've had a mastectomy, or because we're married and people are going to analyse this or that. That would be cheating."

The Oscar winner also feared the film, which tells the tale of an unhappily married couple, would drive a wedge between her and Brad, 51, as they filmed it on their "honeymoon" in Malta shortly after tying the knot in the South of France in August 2014.

She told the New York Times: "A few days into filming I thought: This is such a bad idea. What was I thinking? This is going to destroy us before we've even gotten started. But by the time we got to the end of the film, we'd argued, challenged each other, disappointed each other, had good days, bad days, all of it. We'd pushed through, learned something about each other, found a new working relationship and came to like the idea of 'Yeah, it gets really bad, but you work it out.' "