Actress Angelina Jolie showed another side of herself at the debut of her second film as director, "Unbroken," which had its premiere in Sydney, Australia on Nov. 17.

Jolie, 39, who admitted to PEOPLE Magazine that she "had to convince the studio she was up to the task of directing," said she was "terrified."

"I had to fight quite hard for this job," she told the magazine on the red carpet.

According to the "Unbroken" producer Matt Baer, the film was in development hell for decades, and Jolie was the one to make the push for the film.

"In my long journey to get this film made, Angelina was certainly the catalyst director to connect with what I was trying to get going," Baer told PEOPLE. "Lou's story is difficult to tell in film, it's so long and so epic, but Angie wasn't afraid to take it on. For many years, others were afraid to take it on, but Angie had it instinctively in her creative soul."

Husband Brad Pitt, 50, joined Jolie for first time since their August wedding at Chateau Miraval in the south of France.

Ever the glamour queen, Jolie wore a lace form-fitting Gucci frock to her premiere with simple bejewelled diamond stud earrings, a sleek tennis bracelet and her wedding band, while Pitt dressed down in his signature black suit and tie.

Based on the 2010 non-fiction novel of the same name by Laura Hillenbrand, the biographical war drama follows Olympic track and field athlete Louis Zamperini, who survived a plane crash over the Pacific, only to be imprisoned in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, where he spent two and a half years. Joel and Ethan Coen adapted the script. 

Zamperini died at 97 after a 40-day bout of pneumonia on July 2, 2014, nearly six months before the film's scheduled release.  

"It was an extremely moving experience to watch someone watching their own life ... someone so physically strong ... and they are at the stage where their body is giving up," Jolie told the December issue of Vanity Fair of his death. "And yet we laughed together, and talked about his mom. And being a man of such faith, he talked about all the people he believed he would be seeing on the other side. And that it would bring him peace. After a life of fighting, he could rest.:

In a surprise turn of the evening, the Academy Award winner came to tears when she was introduced to activist and founder of Pink Hope, Krystal Barter, who was hailed by the Sydney Morning Herald as "Australia's own Angelina Jolie" for having undergone a preventative double mastectomy to remove the BRCA1 gene like the actress.

In a photograph later posted to Twitter, The Pink Hope Charity captioned an Instagram post of the two embracing.

"Angelina wanted to meet our founder Krystal at the #unbrokenpremiere and what a moment it turned out to be. So proud of all Pink Hope stands for and our amazing community," the post said. 

With "Unbroken" receiving its theatrical release date on Dec. 25, the award-winning thespian has made headlines again for making one of the actors in the film "physically sick." According to IB Times, 33-year-old Japanese singer-actor Miyavi, who portrays the sadistic POW camp guard and leader Sgt. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, was reduced to tears after filming an intense scene wherein he tortured the inmates.

Jolie encouraged Miyavi to immerse himself into the disposition of the Watanabe, a man hardened and desensitized by ultra-violence.

The scenes resulted in the pop star-turned-actor sobbing and, later, vomiting. Sources close to The Independent said the actor, whose real name is Takamasa Ishihara, just "couldn't stop crying."

"It was awful torture for me to hate the other actors -- I had to have hatred for them," he told Vanity Fair magazine, according to E! Online. "When I had to beat them, I had to think about protecting my family. At the same time, I didn't want to be just a bad guy. I wanted to put humanity in this role. [Matsuhiro] was both crazy and sadistic, but also weak and traumatized. It's a story that is still painful for my country, but she [Jolie] told me she wanted to make a bridge between all countries that had conflict."

According to the NY Daily News, in the award-winning book, Zamperini refers to Watanabe as "The Bird," for how he derived sexual pleasure from beating detainees.

When it "Unbroken" hits theaters Christmas Day, it will compete against the Rob Marshall-directed musical fantasy film "Into The Woods," buddy comedy "The Interview," Ava DuVernay's "Selma," the Tim Burton-directed biographical drama "Big Eyes," and Clint Eastwood's biographical action flick "American Sniper" for at the box office. This is Jolie's second film as a director.