Aniston: Filming The Break-Up 'cathartic'

Jennifer Aniston says she laughed when she was asked to film The Break-Up, because she had first-hand experience.

“I kind of laughed and thought, ‘Well ... that’s funny’,” Aniston said.

She said working on the film during her own marriage split with Brad Pitt was not all bad. “I kind of found it – something like a sign or something that, you know, to do it because it was sort of like in a way, umm, a cathartic thing.”

Aniston divorced Pitt last October after four and a half years of marriage.

The 37-year-old actress said she found her own experience beneficial to her role in the film, which opened in the US today.

“I felt very lucky in a way. ... If this had come to me at any other time in my life, I don’t know if I would had been able to really get it – for myself - on the level that I would have wanted to as an actor.”

Aniston has reportedly been dating her co-star Vince Vaughn. She described him as someone who was generous and thoughtful to work with.

“He asks questions, he listens, he’s interested in other people, it’s not just about him,” she said.

Angelina Jolie, Pitt’s co-star in the 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith, gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Shiloh Nouvel, in Namibia last week.

It was during the filming of Mr & Mrs Smith that reports of a romance between Pitt and Jolie began.