Angelina Jolie comes from one of the world’s most renowned families, but she didn’t always see herself as a mother or a fiancée.

Angelina Jolie hasn’t graced the cover of a major magazine in a long time, so it was a pleasant surprise to see her on the cover of Elle’s June edition — and, of course, she emanated elegance on the black-and-white cover photographed by Saint Laurent design director Hedi Slimane.

The actress tells ELLE magazine that she never intended on having a family or even a relationship like the one she has with Brad Pitt.

The 38-year-old says, “I never thought I’d have children, I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person. Having come from a broken home–you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them.”

The actress, who will star in the upcoming Maleficent picture, asserted that she and Pitt are now “more interested in each other” than ever before.

Jolie has been married to Brad Pitt, 50, for eight years and the couple has six children together. Jolie raved about Pitt, who stayed with her during her bilateral mastectomy last year, acknowledging that being true to herself frequently meant “stepping out of something that’s maybe safe or traditional.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the pair, who met on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2005, will reunite to collaborate on their next film project.

Angelina Jolie talked about how her relationship with Brad Pitt has changed over the course of their nine years together. “You get together and you’re two individuals and you feel inspired by each other, you challenge each other, you complement each other, drive each other beautifully crazy. After all these years, we have history—and when you have history with somebody, you’re friends in such a very real, deep way that there’s such a comfort, and an ease, and a deep love that comes from having been through quite a lot together.”

After years of stating that they would not marry until same-sex couples were given the same rights, the couple got engaged in April 2012.

They also have a strong sense of family and are frequently pictured touring the world with their children. It wasn’t only Jolie who was required on the set of her latest film, “Maleficent,” as her children Pax, Zahara, and Vivienne are also featured in the film. Vivienne even gets a part as Aurora, a little girl.

“My little Vivienne – we call her my shadow, because there’s nothing I can do to shake her. I can be tired, I can be grumpy, I can be in a terrible mood, and she doesn’t care. It’s ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ and she’ll cling to me,” said Jolie, who hisses at her child in the film. “We knew that she would still do that thing, she’d still smile at me and insist that I pick her up. So we couldn’t really cast anybody else.”

It’s unlikely that she’ll be able to bring her children back to the set. “After two days of it, Brad and I were so stressed we never wanted to do it again,” she explained.

Jolie believes her twenties were a time for her to figure out who she was in the world. “And in fact, it wasn’t a need to be destructive or rebellious – it was a need to find a full voice, to push open the walls around you,” she says of that period. “You want to be free. And as you start to feel that you are being corralled into a certain life, you kind of push against it. It may come out very strange, it may be interpreted wrong, but you’re trying to find out who you are.”

“I realized that very young—that a life where you don’t live to your full potential, or you don’t experiment, or you’re afraid, or you hesitate, or there are things you know you should do but you just don’t get around to them, is a life that I’d be miserable living,” the actress says. “And the only way to feel that I’m on the right path is just to be true to myself, whatever that may be, and that tends to come with stepping out of something that’s maybe safe or traditional.”

Kissing her brother James Haven on the Oscars red carpet in 2000 and wearing ex-husband Billy Bob’s blood around her neck on the red carpet were two of her most bizarre incidents.