Prior to directing the action/comedy "Mr and Mrs Smith," Liman directed the romantic comedy "Getting In," the indie ensemble film "Go," "Swingers" with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, and "Bourne Identity" starring Matt Damon. After cutting his action teeth on "The Bourne Identity," Liman was selected by producer Akiva Goldsman to helm "Mr and Mrs Smith."

"I hope people don’t take the violence away from this movie, but really take away that this film is a celebration of a marriage and of relationships and of the hard work that it takes. It’s an appreciation of the fact that relationships should take work every day. So I’m hoping that [with] this it’s a positive message that people are taking away."

Liman looks upon the film’s mix of genres in a slightly different light than his stars. "I always viewed this as a… Brad and Angie thought they were [going to] be in a romantic comedy. They didn’t think they were in an action movie. But the characters, you know, because when you are having relationship issues, that sort of eclipses everything else. See, our context was a spy movie, but they were in a love story."

"Mr and Mrs Smith" went through a couple of casting phases before Angelina Jolie signed on to the project. At the very beginning of the process, "Mr and Mrs Smith" was a Nicole Kidman/Brad Pitt film. Then it was just Brad Pitt for a split second. And then Angelina Jolie signed on to play Mrs Smith. According to Liman, Jolie was the only actress – other than Kidman – he ever had a conversation with about the film.

"The thing is, that really for like, sort of a Hollywood action movie, there are not usually female roles that are this strong. Where, you know, as Brad was saying, she really had to be his equal, if not just slightly better. …And then too this really was a great script, and to star opposite Brad Pitt, there was a lot of interest in the film. But from our side, the only person we ever actually had a conversation with other than Nicole was Angie," explained Liman.

"It was important to me that people don’t take the film too seriously. This is not the sequel to ‘Bourne Identify.’ This film is operating as a metaphor, just it’s operating at a slightly more absurd level. And if you try to take the film too seriously…you’re gonna miss what it’s really about, because it’s really about just whether these two people can work out their relationship - these two characters can work it out. And so that was just a fun little thing that happened. I thought it would help sort of set the tone of the movie, so that people understood that we’re not taking the spy component too seriously. That’s not why we’re making this movie. Nobody on this stage was making this movie because we cared about the spies. We were there because we wanted to explore this couple trying to figure out their relationship."

"I can tell you the secret of their success. They’re not pawns in their movies. Well I’ve obviously only worked with them on one movie, but they don’t just come in and just play their role. They take control of the role and they have great instincts about movies, about their characters in movies, what’s interesting. They’re interesting people. …Their roles that they play are always so interesting and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because they participated in the creation of the roles that they played."

"…I would say that, you know, the scenes were all very challenging and the tone of this movie was so specific. But on the other hand I was just pleasantly surprised and shocked at just how funny these guys were and how funny they were together, and the sort of charm that they brought. We had talked abstractly before the film started, you know, about the films that we all loved and what we were hoping to achieve. The moment we put them on the set, the sort of on-screen chemistry and the banter that kind of naturally flowed was like a tremendous gift. The technical requirements of this film were more ambitious than anything I’d ever attempted before, but I always knew I had this unbelievably strong skeleton with which to build the movie, which was the unbelievably strong on-screen chemistry that they brought."

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