Angelina Jolie has (perhaps indirectly) influenced Brad Pitt to get additional tattoos, travel more, get involved in charity work, and become a doting father. It seems she’s now influenced him to give way too much information in interviews, too. Never one to hold back incriminating information about sexual proclivities or psychological failings, Angelina is known for giving quotes that will haunt her until the day she dies. Now Brad Pitt is giving us TMI and is trying to explain how he made sure that Jennifer Aniston was ok with it before he gave in to the seductive wiles of Angelina.

He’s trying to let us all know that he and Jennifer were at a standstill in their marriage and made a mutual decision to end it before he let Angelina do more than whisper sweet nothings to him over the phone and hold his hand in public. Don’t the guys always say that their marriages sucked before they cheated? Maybe he didn’t actually “have sexual relations with that woman” before he left Aniston proper, but he’s a fool to remind us about it.

In a new interview with V magazine, Brad Pitt claims he maintains a “deep friendship” with his ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, 38, and defends how he ended their four-and-a-half year marriage in January 2005. Among his bombshells: that he stifled his attraction to Angelina Jolie, 32, until after he and Aniston had ended the relationship.

“The most important thing about that time was for Jen and me to figure out if – how do I put it? – if we didn’t want to go on without any outside influence,” he tells the magazine of the last days of his marriage, which were marked by media reports of an affair with his Mr. and Mrs. Smith costar.

“Is this where we got off? Have we taken this as far as we wanted to go?” He concludes, “Those questions had to be answered before an attraction to Angie could be answered.”

Asked if he still approves of how he handled the split, Pitt, 43, saying that protecting all parties involved was most important to him, replies, “I don’t know how better to have handled it…The thing guiding me then was you don’t know how many days you have, and you need life to be everything you need it to be.”

[From US Weekly]

Angelina has said quite a lot in defense of her hookup with Brad on the set of Mr. of Mrs. Smith. She said that it wasn’t that exciting because they were friends first and then gradually it turned into something more:

“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…Not as exciting as what a lot of people would like to believe. 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.”

[January, 2007 issue of Vogue via IDLYITW]

The thing is, that was two and a half years ago, we’ve all moved on, and through Angelina they’ve already said that they weren’t hitting the sheets before Brad left Jen. Why bring it up again? There’s really no need, and it’s got to be painful for Aniston to keep hearing it in the press. Brad shouldn’t talk about it anymore, and should just move on with his life. I know people are harping on it and there are some that will never forgive them for what happened, but to me it’s old news and Brad should know better than to dig that shit up again.

While earlier rumors had the Jolie-Pitts settling in Berlin, it’s looks like they’ll be in NY for a while. Maddox, 6, has enrolled at the Lycee Francais de New York on the Upper East Side. Lessons are given in French. Brad Pitt and Maddox were seen at the Yankees’ game on Tuesday night along with director Spike Lee and his son.

Brad and Angelina are shown at the Venice Film Festival on 9/4/07, thanks to PRPhotos.