Brad Pitt calls Jennifer Aniston 'a dear friend'

Brad Pitt is still on the defensive about those seemingly disparaging comments he made about his failed marriage to ex-wife Jennifer Aniston.

Pitt hit the headlines last week after he opened up to Parade magazine in a revealing interview, where he spoke with surprising candor about his marriage.

During the eyebrow-lifting confab the actor touched on the tail-end of his marriage to Aniston, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.

"It became very clear to me that I was intent on trying to find a movie about an interesting life, but I wasn't living an interesting life myself," he said of the period before he met current companion Angelina Jolie.

That was followed by a comment that suggested his marriage to Jen was the pits: "I think that my marriage had something to do with it, trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn't."

But since meeting Jolie, he said his life was now anything but dull.

"I'm satisfied with making true choices and finding the woman I love, Angie, and building a family that I love so much," he said.

"A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss ... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all.

"One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mum," he told Parade. "She is such a great mum. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her."

Pitt, 47, swiftly went into damage control the day after the interview was published. He promptly released a statement in a bid to clarify his remarks, denying that he was dissing his ex.

"It grieves me that this was interpreted this way. Jen is an incredibly giving, loving, and hilarious woman who remains my friend. It is an important relationship I value greatly," he explained in the statement.

"The point I was trying to make is not that Jen was dull, but that I was becoming dull to myself - and that, I am responsible for."

He further clarified to People.com: "That was never my intention for it to be spun that way," he said. "People read things into it that just weren't there."

They 'went ballistic'...

But how did Jen respond to the news? Tabloid tattle be true, she was spitting tacks over Pitt's remarks.

Us Weekly reports that Jen's agent and publicists "went ballistic" after they caught wind of the Parade interview, and "angrily reached out to Pitt's camp".

A source says: "They got his team involved and Brad was read the riot act - the only way you can read the riot act to Brad Pitt."

But a source tells E! Online that Jen has moved on, and is so over the prolonged postmortem of the downfall of her marriage to Pitt.

"Jen is wise enough to know that tabloids and gossip need to make something out of nothing in order to sell magazines," says the snitch. "It has no relationship to reality at all."

'She doesn't deserve it...'

Meanwhile, Pitt has a movie to promote. He dropped by the Today show this week to chat about his baseball flick, Moneyball, but spent much of the interview dissecting the Parade interview.

"I don't know what was pieced together or put together. All I know is that my point was, the best thing I'd done as a father is be sure that my kids have a good mother," Pitt tells Matt Lauer in the interview, set to air on Thursday.

"That's all I was, or am, trying to say. It has no reference to the past. And I think it's a shame that I can't say something nice about Angie without Jen being drug in. You know, she doesn't deserve it."

Pitt also adds: "I don't want them to say anything bad like that about Jen. She's a dear friend of mine."

Lauer probes: "Did she call you after the quotes got out?"

Pitt: "No. No. But she's also a seasoned veteran and she knows. You know, and she's a valuable person. We spent seven years together. Come on."

'Mummy and daddy time...'

As for his relationship with Jolie, with whom he has six kids, Pitt reveals that it's a struggle for the couple to find quiet time together.

"We carve out time," Pitt revealed to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday.

"We carve out Mummy, Daddy time...It's called a hotel," he laughed. "You got to get out of this house. You got to leave."

DeGeneres also pressed Pitt for an answer on marriage. Pitt and Jolie maintain that they won't get hitched until gay marriage is legal in America.

"We live in this great country that is about freedom. It is defined by our freedom and equality and yet we allow this discrimination to go on everyday and that's not what we're about. That's not what makes us great. Until that is reversed. I just don't get it," he explained.

Slipping into an Italian accent, he added: "It'a make'a no sense to me."

DeGeneres pushed further: "So that means if next week, if it's legal for everyone to get married that you would then be getting married the very next day?"

"It seems," replied Pitt, adding that his brood is "putting on the heat" for him and Jolie to wed.

"The kids are putting on the heat. They really are. They are putting on the heat."

He concluded: "I don't know what the future holds."

Watch Pitt's interview with Ellen below:

What do you make of Pitt's remarks about his marriage? Fair call? Or is he, as the erstwhile Friends star quipped in 2005, still missing a "sensitivity chip"?

- Blogger Bites Back