London, Sept 6 (ANI): Brad Pitt has broken his silence on his relationship with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston and admits that the two still enjoy a "deep friendship".

The actor, in an interview with Details magazine, tells the mag that after seven years together, they continue to be great friends.

"Jen and I still maintain a deep friendship and have a lot of life together that isn't erased in any way," the Daily Mail quoted him, as saying.

He also opens up about his split from Aniston in the interview, and tells the mag that he handled the situation as best as he could to protect her, himself, as well as girlfriend Angelina Jolie.

"I don't know how better to have handled it. My view was, this is no one's business in the end - at least in matters of the heart.

"So you need to protect all involved as much as possible.

"I don't know if that cooled things off or exacerbated them, but it was a thing I felt justly about at the time.

"Again, the thing guiding me then was you don't know how many days you have and you need life to be everything you want it to be," he added.

He also tells V magazine that he and Aniston did a lot of soul searching before deciding to end their marriage.

"The most important thing to me about that time was for Jen and me to figure out if... we didn't want to go on with any outside influence: `Is this where we get off? Have we taken this as far as we wanted to go?' Those questions had to be answered before an attraction to Angie could be answered," Contactmusic quoted him, as telling the mag.

Pitt and Aniston split in 2005, just months after he met Angelina Jolie while working with her on 'Mr and Mrs Smith'. (ANI)