Angelina: "I Tried Not to Steal Jen's 'Best Friend"

Angelina Jolie fell hard for Brad Pitt on the set of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" - but didn't chase Hollywood's leading hunk because he was married to his "best friend," the smoldering actress said in a jaw-dropping magazine interview.

In her first in-depth words about life as half of Tinseltown's first couple, Jolie tells Vogue magazine she never wanted to ruin Pitt's marriage to actress Jennifer Aniston - it just happened that way. "I didn't know much about exactly where Brad was in his personal life [when they met on the set of "Smith"]. But it was clear he was with his best friend, someone he loves and respects," Jolie said in a revealing interview in the magazine's January issue. "And so we were both living, I suppose, very full lives."

While Jolie adamantly insisted she and Pitt were not seeking to pair up, the pouty-lipped bombshell confessed they were tempted to make more of what they had. "And it took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we'd earlier allowed ourselves to believe," Jolie said. "And both knowing that the reality of that was a big thing, something that was going to take a lot of serious consideration."

Jolie said she and Pitt remained "very, very good friends" after shooting "Smith." They were resigned to staying nothing more than pals, Jolie said, until Pitt and Aniston announced their breakup in early 2005. Pitt and Aniston filed for divorce that spring, amid rampant reports that the Hollywood hunk had his eye on Jolie the whole time.

Vogue didn't directly press Jolie on whether she and Pitt fooled around behind Aniston's back. But Jolie said she realized, early on, that she shared a deep, emotional bond with Pitt before they formally hooked up post-Aniston.

"Not as exciting as what a lot of people would like to believe," Jolie said. "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." "And then we just continued to take time. We remained very, very good friends - with this realization - for a long time," she added. "And then life developed in a way where we could be together, where it felt like something we would do, we should do."

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