Would Brad Pitt Want to Direct Wife Angelina Jolie Pitt Someday? 'I'd Rather Work for Her'

At the By the Sea premiere Thursday in Hollywood, Brad Pitt also says marriage is "worth fighting for"

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Angelina Jolie Pitt called the shots while directing husband Brad Pitt in By the Sea – and the star says that’s just the way he likes it.

When asked whether he has any desire to turn the tables and direct his wife in the future, Pitt was forthright in his response.

“No, I have no desire,” Pitt told reporters Thursday in Hollywood at the world premiere gala screening at AFI Fest 2015 presented by Audi. “I’d rather work for her.”

The film stars Pitt, 51, and Jolie Pitt, 40, as a couple stuck in a troubled marriage. Although the pair seem far from troubled in real life – appearing close and loving at the premiere and at the WSJ Magazine 2015 Innovator Awards the previous evening – the couple are the first to admit their marriage isn’t perfect, and that’s okay.

“I think, for me, it’s just that the road is long, and it’s worth fighting for,” he said. “The dividends worth fighting for instead of jumping ship is more profound than any beginning, any kind of new romance.”

Jolie Pitt, meanwhile, told PEOPLE on the red carpet how she and Pitt handle inevitable disagreements.

“We push through them. We talk. We just keep talking,” she says. “I think the most important thing you learn through the years of marriage is that everybody fights, it’s going to get ugly. But you have to keep trying to understand each other, where things come from, and you have to never keep anything in, really. You have a long life together and a long road ahead. So it’s better to just get it all out.”

Jolie Pitt also told reporters that the process of making the film bears some resemblance to marriage itself: Both involve a bit of risk-taking and a whole lot of commitment.

“Really, it was so bizarre driving up here tonight and seeing it on a poster, because it was this odd, secret thing that I wrote just for my own therapy after the kids went to sleep,” she told reporters on the red carpet. “Then, Brad and I joked for years that it was something like, ‘Oh, it’s that crazy one. We’d never do that,’ kind of a thing. Then one day we thought, ‘That’s what you have to do in life: You have to do the one that you are scared of, and the one that’s a little crazy,’ ” she continued. “And that’s what you should do in your marriage, too.”