"[Acting is] like being in therapy, in a way," Angelina explained of why she "needed acting more" in her younger years, during an interview with the Financial Times posted on Friday. "You ask these questions as you grow up: am I strong enough, am I sane enough? Do I understand love, do I understand myself?
"I'm older [now] and I know who I am," she continued. "I'm less interested in the character helping me answer something ... than in being able to answer it for myself, as a woman, as an adult, with my family."
Although the Academy Award-winning actress admits she no longer loves acting "as much as she did," she couldn't resist the role of CIA agent Evelyn Salt - a character originally written to be played by a man for 2010's action thriller, "Salt" - when she read the script in 2008 while breastfeeding her and Brad's newborn twins, Knox and Vivienne in the hospital.
"I was... feeling so soft and mama ... and I was flipping these pages and it was all fighting and shooting guns," Angelina said. "I thought, 'That's what I need. I need to get out of my nightgown and I need a gun.'
"I'm sure many a woman who has been through childbirth has thought, 'It would be nice to get a little physical, get a little wild ... to remember what that other side is like,'" she added.
The stunning star recently took her first turn behind the camera for her upcoming directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" - due out in theaters on December 23 - and revealed she and Brad, who both devote much of their free time to charitable causes, plan to lessen their movie commitments in the future.
"As Brad and I get older we're going to do fewer films. I've been working for a long time, he's been working for a long time," she said. "We've had a nice run and don't want to be doing this our whole lives. There are a lot of other things to do."
As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, Brad - who famously told Esquire magazine in 2006 that he and Angelina would not marry until "everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able" - recently revealed the couple's children are forcing the power pair to reexamine that position.
"The kids ask about marriage," Brad told USA Today's Weekend Edition in May. "It's meaning more and more to them. So, it's something we've got to look at."[oscars.movies.yahoo.com]
