Angelina Jolie is the most popular woman in Hollywood who has received almost every possible cinema accolade. Her life is shadowed by scandal and drama, and Oscar nominations have been sprinkled with Golden Raspberries, yet she continues to develop her talent and push her limits. People are used to judging her by the opening sentences in the tabloids, but Angelina’s life is much more interesting than the scandalous headlines. She is an actress, director, philanthropist, and mother to children from all over the world. Charming and eccentric, Miss Jolie is Okolo Kino’s new leading lady.
In the second instalment we’ll learn about her marriage to Brad Pitt, the most difficult roles of her career and her directing debut which will portray Angelina in a new light.
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Angelina Jolie is the most popular woman in Hollywood who has received almost every possible cinema accolade. Her life is shadowed by scandal and drama, and Oscar nominations have been sprinkled with Golden Raspberries, yet she continues to develop her talent and push her limits. People are used to judging her by the opening sentences in the tabloids, but Angelina’s life is much more interesting than the scandalous headlines. She is an actress, director, philanthropist, and mother to children from all over the world. Charming and eccentric, Miss Jolie is Okolo Kino’s new leading lady.
In the second instalment we’ll learn about her marriage to Brad Pitt, the most difficult roles of her career and her directing debut which will portray Angelina in a new light.
If you can’t wait to see our next work, become a part of our project on patreon, and receive VIP perks and privileges for your contribution:
https://www.patreon.com/okolokinotube
Music by Epidemic Sound and Artlist
https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/rk02yz/
https://artlist.io/LCT-322572
ANGELINA JOLIE PART 2
Hollywood is full of films whose path to studio approval takes years, if not decades. Whether it’s because the stars haven’t aligned or because of the pragmatism of producers the green light is not often lit. The story of a married couple who are killers, neither of whom suspect their partner’s profession had gone through all the circles of screenwriter hell. The producers rejected more than fifty drafts of the script before launching the pre-production process. The comedy-action film Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a loose adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock film based on a failed TV series of the same name from 1997. The director’s chair was filled by Doug Liman who had won over critics and seen box office success with The Bourne Identity, and the main roles were to be played by Nicole Kidman and Johnny Depp. However, Depp was so exhausted from his busy filming schedule that he decided to back out of the film. The vacancy was filled by Brad Pitt, but soon Nicole Kidman also left the project. A few months of unsuccessful searching for a leading lady led to Pitt leaving. In December of 2003, Angelina Jolie agreed to play Mrs. Smith. Pitt liked the choice so much that he returned to the project despite a scheduling conflict due to the dates having already been confirmed for work on the crime comedy Ocean’s Twelve.
Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie had shot about half of the scenes before Brad left to go spend the next four months robbing Europe. Having to let her costar go saddened the actress, and she admitted that she couldn’t wait to return to work. Filming resumed only in August of 2004. The electric chemistry of the duet charged every scene of the movie, and the shooting scene at the house is considered to be one of the sexiest sequences in film (even though explicit scenes with Pitt and Jolie were cut while editing the reel). Thanks to this, the picture received a PG-13 rating which was beneficial for its release. Half a billion in box office profits was a record number for both Brad and Angie’s careers. They also were each paid 20 million which didn’t impress Pitt who was used to large sums, but in comparison to her other roles, it was the most Jolie had ever been paid.
Of course, the press once again devoted much less attention to the film than to the rumors surrounding the celebrity duo. The relationship of Brad and Jennifer Aniston was considered by Hollywood the goal of every marriage. But after the release of Mr. & Mrs. Smith speculation about the romance between the leading actors consumed the minds of thousands of reporters. Pitt stated that he was only friends with Jolie, but reports refused to take him seriously, and then a few months later Aniston filed for a divorce because of what she called “irreconcilable differences”. Ms. “Irreconcilable differences” soon officially started dating Brad, and their first public appearance provoked a myriad of negative criticisms. Jolie was smeared by Jennifer’s fans and hundreds of publications loyal to the actress. However, decades of verbal criticism, Golden Globe shenanigans, Oscars, and film premiers had given the actress thick skin. Jolie enthusiastically described the details of how their romance with Brad began and didn’t seem to notice the harsh words addressed to her. The only sensitive topic was the accusation of Pitt’s adultery. Angelina insisted that until they divorced, she had not been in a relationship with Pitt, and rumors of intrigue while shooting was just hearsay. For the actress, this triggered childhood trauma because she still had not forgiven her father Jon Voight for similar behavior.
The gossip didn’t die down because soon the couple went on vacation in Kenya where Angelina adopted a second child, and when she returned to the USA, Brad officially adopted both Maddox and Zahara. The children received a hyphenated last name, and Angie was off to shoot a new film by Robert Zemeckis.
A small role in the animated reel Beowulf attracted the actress because of the chance to work with one of her favorite directors. Angelina’s brilliant appearance almost outweighed the outdated graphics and choppy plot, but only for a few minutes. When Paramount Studios approved the 150-million-dollar project, motion-capture technology had just begun to convert the hearts of directors. Two years earlier Zemeckis had already experimented with this effect when he had filmed The Polar Express with Tom Hanks. This time costumes with motion sensors were given to dozens of Hollywood stars, and the plot was based on an ancient Germanic epic poem.
After a few weeks in a pavilion with a blue screen and hundreds of cameras on the walls, the task was passed to a team of computer graphics wizards. The animation took about a year and Beowulf was released on the big screen only in November of 2007. By the time it premiered, the CGI had become outdated and critics thought the characters were more like clay figures which didn’t provoke an emotional reaction. By the way, the same comments had been made about The Polar Express. Well, Robert Zemeckis paid the price with poor box office numbers and Jolie added another sexual scene to her repertoire. However, few know that the actress did not undress for the camera, her face was superimposed on the body of model Rachel Bernstein.
In 2006 Angelina acted in another film, the historical drama The Good Shepherd.
The story tells of the founding of the CIA, spy games, and the cold war, another typical Hollywood production saga. The screenplay written by Eric Roth (who had previously won an Oscar for the adaptation of Forrest Gump) was known in LA as one of the best scripts lying on the shelf. It had been written by Roth in 1995 for Francis Ford Coppola who had rejected the proposal. The text would have never been turned into a film if a year later an actor dying to play the lead role (Robert De Niro) hadn’t breathed fresh life into it. One director angling for the job was John Frankenheimer, the same one who helped Jolie win her first Golden Globe. Unfortunately, in 2002 John died but Robert was so inspired by the project that he decided to shoot it himself. 10 years earlier he had first debuted as a director in A Bronx Tale which was well received by critics, so the chance to work with De Niro caught the attention of dozens of actors. Besides Angelina, the cast was joined by Matt Daemon, Alec Baldwin, and Joe Pesci who returned to the screen eight years after working on his last film. The director set aside a small role for himself too. This cast was also special because of Eddie Redmayne’s debut, who played the son of the main characters, despite being only six years younger than Angelina.
The picture is full of complicated references and political allusions, time jumping, intrigue, and flashbacks. The viewers did not appreciate the director’s efforts, calling the film murky and boring, and the main characters -- cardboard archetypes that didn’t provoke empathy or interest. Considering that in an interview De Niro explained his detailed work with the actors, these reviews seem doubly offensive. For the sake of objectivity, it’s worth mentioning that at the Berlin International Film Festival The Good Shepherd received the Silver Bear in the category Best Acting Ensemble.
While filming, the press found out about Angelina’s pregnancy, and in May Jolie and Pitt went to Namibia where they got ready for the birth. The couple chose the place where their daughter Shiloh would be born in order to draw attention to the problems of poverty in Namibia, and the government assured them of full confidentiality. Journalists who wanted to cover the event were not even granted visas without the future parents’ permission. Publishers created an auction for the rights to take pictures of the child first. People Magazine won and paid over 4 million dollars, which Brad and Angie immediately donated to charity.
Three months after giving birth Angelina started filming the drama A Mighty Heart. The screen adaptation of the true story about the tragic death of a Wall Street Journal writer at the hands of Pakistani terrorists was a Plan B Entertainment project. The company was created in the early 2000s by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The actress was intrigued by the memoirs of Mariane Pearl and she had planned to star in the movie. After the divorce, Plan B went with Pitt and the role went to Angelina.
The movie was filmed in the USA, France, and India which replaced Pakistan. At first director Michael Winterbottom went to Islamabad and Karachi where he worked on the wide shots but soon the government forbade him to film inside their borders and the views were replaced by the outskirts of Mumbai.
Jolie portrayed a strong, willful, fearless woman who was fighting terrorism almost single-handedly. The actress’s performance impressed critics and Mariane herself, and at the end of the year, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress. Once again she couldn’t escape the scandals and verbal attacks. After the reel was released, Angelina was accused of cultural appropriation because she played a woman belonging to a different race. The film used makeup to darken Jolie’s skin which harkened to a time when Hollywood called upon white actors to play characters from other ethnic groups. The arguments continued for over a month until Pearl herself brought clarity to the situation.
MARIANE PEARL
quote 13:14
Also, in 2007 Angelina’s debut film as a director was released. The documentary A Place in Time combined dozens of Jolie’s famous friends who traveled to all four corners of the earth with film crews and recorded three minutes of life where they were. Once again, her art was interrupted by personal tragedy. This time there was no gossip, only genuine empathy for Angelina’s loss. In January of 2007 after 8 years of battle with breast cancer, Marcheline Bertrand died.
Jolie shared that her mother had sacrificed her personal life and ambitions to raise her and her brother. A gift which she would never be able to return.
A month and a half later Angelina adopted another child, a Vietnamese boy by the name of Pax. After Marcheline’s death, the actress cut down her screen time and dedicated her free time to her family, though she had already agreed to film a new sharp-witted action film. Hollywood is a business, so despite her mourning, she started work in April of the same year.
Perhaps for Angelina, it was just another movie about shooting, car chasing, and spinning bullets, but for Timur Bekmambetov, it was his Hollywood debut. The director rose to fame in Russia thanks to his films Night Watch and Day Watch based on the novels by Sergei Lukyanenko. The success of the fantasy thriller attracted the attention of Universal Studios which helped the director to raise a budget of 75 million for the screen adaptation of the comics Wanted.
Jolie joined the project only thanks to special conditions. It wasn’t about the 15 million dollar paycheck, although the cast’s salaries ate up a large portion of the budget, but the right to change the script. The actress was allowed to invite the author from the second installment of Tomb Raider who rewrote Fox’s character based on Angelina, changed a few important scenes, and even edited the finale.
Then, there was a month of filming in Prague and a few weeks in Chicago (where the residents could hardly go anywhere because The Dark Knight was simultaneously being shot there). Over the last few years, Angelina had gotten used to the image of the action hero, so in the company of Morgan Freeman, James MacAvoy, Chris Pratt, and Konstantin Khabensky she really went all in. MacAvoy said when recalling the scene where Fox beats up Wesley that he really got it good. Dozens of stunts were accompanied by thousands of special effects created by Bekmambetov’s Moscow studio which had worked on The Night Watch movies.
The last scene with Jolie is worth mentioning. She believed that the moral code of her character wouldn’t allow her to behave in any other way and she also wanted to avoid being invited for a potential sequel. Yes, Bekmambetov was planning a part two but was not supported by the producers or the author of the comics Mark Millar. Later this team collaborated with Matthew Vaughn to work on the films Kick-Ass and Kingsman.
Wanted was released only a year later and brought in around 350 million dollars at the box office receiving tolerable reviews for a popcorn action. By this time Jolie was already working on a much harder acting job.
The soul-wrenching plot of the thriller Changeling is based on a true story. In 1928 the nine-year-old son of Christine Collins was kidnapped, and a few months later the Los Angeles police returned the wrong child to the mother. Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski stumbled across the notes from a court hearing involving Collins. He was consumed by what he saw and over the next ten years, he gathered facts one by one, enough to fill six thousand pages. In 2006 the text was purchased by Universal Studios and Ron Howard. After six months of preparation, the director decided to film Frost/Nixon instead and then Angels & Demons, so he decided to switch to producing the film. The project caught the attention of Clint Eastwood. He was touched by the story of the strong female character. In Million Dollar Baby he proved his ability to portray similar roles. The main candidate for the part of Christine was actually Hilary Swank but Eastwood could only picture Angelina Jolie in the role. The director was convinced that a real mother would be able to sympathize with the loss of a child more realistically, plus he was in awe of the actress’s appearance which he thought perfectly complemented the historical period.
But it was this sympathy that for a long time deterred Jolie from the project. Recent family events made for a difficult emotional time in her life and the plot and character of the leading lady were not going to be a walk in the park.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote 20:31
The picture deals with several difficult topics from violence against children to corruption and women’s rights. Despite the differences with some of the real facts, all the hardships faced by the main character occurred in real life. According to the screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, the picture didn’t receive a Palm d’Or at Cannes simply because some of the members of the jury believed that the story was made up since they couldn’t imagine Collins having to go through all of those hardships shown on the screen.
Changeling did well at the box office and some critics to this day believe that the role of Christine Collins was the best in Jolie’s career. The actress was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar, where she lost to Kate Winslet. Later Angelina admitted that while filming she was always thinking about her mother and getting inspiration from the memory of her words and actions as though she felt her mother’s presence on set.
The next role Angelina chose to encourage her children. Tigress was her second experience working with DreamWorks studios. Panda Kung-Fu got amazing press and drew millions of people to theaters, and when the cartoon was presented at Cannes, journalists found out that Jolie was pregnant once again. On the 20th of July 2008 in Nice, she gave birth to twins, a boy, Knox Leon, and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline. Their middle names were inherited from Angelina’s mother and Brad’s grandfather. The first baby photos were also sold to People Magazine for fourteen million dollars. Half of that sum went to support those who were flooded in New Orleans and the other half to the couple’s personal charity.
By the beginning of next year, the actress had landed a role in another action film. The script of the spy action film Salt had been written with Tom Cruise in mind, but because of delays in preparation, he left the project to work on Knight and Day. The text was adjusted for a female character only after Jolie had tentatively agreed, having been invited by Phillip Noyce. Ten years earlier they had already worked together on the thriller The Bone Collector. To Noyce’s surprise, Angelina seemed to follow in Tom Cruise’s footsteps, insisting on doing all her stunts and fight scenes herself. She climbed, jumped, fell, rode a bike, and of course ran, ran, and ran some more.
Yes, the actress took risks. This became clear especially when she wanted to film without using green screens. The director planned to capture Salt hanging off a building in a pavilion, but Angelina insisted on a real location. Later, in one of the chase scenes, Jolie hit her head and finished out the filming day in an ambulance, but thankfully, she only had a slight concussion and, in a few days, resumed work.
For the scene where Salt pretends to be a man, a special look was created. It was developed by the visual artist Kazuhiro Tsuji whose creations graced Men in Black, Planet of the Apes, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The reel broke even but an avalanche of negative reviews came crashing down on Salt. It was like the typical action movies about the Cold War, where evil Soviet generals torture innocent Americans with the help of dozens of stereotypical cliches and follow them with a glass of vodka. On the other hand, the reaction to the terrorists by the careless and disorganized American secret services also deserved criticism and possibly seemed even more offensive.
Angelina’s favorite character type led her to the next project. Again she was only cast after Tom Cruise left, though he was replaced this time by Johnny Depp, while Jolie took Charlize Theron’s place. The comedy-thriller The Tourist was filmed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck whose Lives of Others two years earlier received an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The director abruptly changed genres and created a complicated spy story that unfolded in the most scenic places of Europe. The actress was drawn to the possibility of filming in Venice and the chance to learn how to drive a boat.
By the way, The Tourist is the third film in which Jolie is connected to Russians one way or another, in Wanted it was just one of the characters and a very famous Soviet director, but in Salt and The Tourist, there were the typical Russian villains. The director of the latest film liked the works of Dostoevsky, which is why he named the thugs in honor of the heroes of the book Demons.
The picture was filmed in two months since Depp was already preparing for the fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean and Jolie for her directing debut. The premiere was in December of 2010 less than a year after Angie had read the script for the first time. The Tourist tanked at the American box office but its international profits helped it break even. Despite its low ratings from critics and viewers, at the beginning of the next year, the film was nominated for a Golden Globe in three categories, Best Comedy or Musical, Best Actor, and Best Actress.
Angelina continued her philanthropy even with a large family and a busy shooting schedule. Trips to hotspots and third world countries brought the actress to Bosnia and Herzegovina where she saw the terrible consequences of the Yugoslav wars. The devastation terrified, but the sadness inspired Jolie to write a screenplay about the fall of the government and of love divided by new borderlines. While getting ready for In the Land of Blood and Honey she studied the history of events and interviewed many witnesses, from the diplomat Richard Holbrooke who participated in the negotiations which ended the war to dozens of reporters who were covering the revolution from within. Even the actors chosen for the lead roles helped to restore the facts because both Bosnians Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović had survived the terror personally.
Jolie’s debut script didn’t attract investors, so she invested her own money into the project. When choosing the film crew Angelina realized that she didn’t want to look for a director because she dreamed of filming the picture herself. She spent the next two months in Bosnia and Herzegovina where she stepped into the role of director for the first time. Of course, a cruel wartime drama that is being simultaneously filmed in English and Serbian was quite an undertaking for an amateur. Her experience on the other side of the camera resulted in spectacular financial losses. With a budget of thirteen million dollars, the reel brought in a little over one million. The Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film seemed like a sick joke after the plethora of scathing reviews. Critics praised Angelina’s attempt at publicizing the terrors of war, but instead of a work of art, it turned out to be an activist’s slogan.
After the grueling work on her directing debut, Angelina got to relax and enjoy the fun of voicing over the second part of the cartoon Kung-Fu Panda.
During this time the actress openly shared that she had had a preventative double mastectomy. The operation lowers the risk of the development of breast and ovarian cancers. This was the illness that neither Jolie’s mother, grandmother nor aunt had been able to conquer. After a genetic test that showed a very high probability of cancer developing Jolie decided to take radical action. Furthermore, after recuperating, she wrote an article detailing every stage of her treatment which was published in the New York Times.
At the same time, Jolie continued to receive invitations to act in any and every action film and thriller but she dreamed only of returning to the director’s chair. Her agent covered her desk with hundreds of scripts for which studios had not been able to find teams. Among hundreds of thousands of pages of dialogue, Angelina found a story that stole her heart from the first lines. Unbroken is the biography of the athlete Louis Zamperini who was in the Olympics, a war, and survived captivity. Universal Studios bought the rights to the screen adaptation of Zamperini’s autobiography Devil at My Heels back in the fifties. Tony Curtis wanted to portray Louis, he was the star of the musical Some Like It Hot, but the project kept getting delayed and he moved on to shoot Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. The picture was abandoned for half a century though in the 90s Nicolas Cage also wanted to resurrect it. Universal’s interest was only rekindled in 2010 when Laura Hillenbrand wrote her version of Zamperini’s story. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption was top of the bestseller list. The studio bought the rights to the new book too, and this time was determined to take it all the way to the movie theater screens.
Of course, at first, the producers did not support Angelina’s candidacy. Her last work was hardly worth writing on a resume, and for a project which cost 65 million, they needed an experienced director. Nonetheless, the actress was given a chance and invited to a meeting where Jolie gave them a serious presentation. She had not only prepared a convincing speech but also hundreds of pages of storyboards where she depicted the scene by scene plan for the picture. The producers were impressed with her level of energy and ambition but she was confirmed only after deciding that they would surround the young director with the most experienced experts in their fields. William Nicholson’s script was rewritten and enriched by the Cohen Brothers who were invited to the film and were joined by their irreplaceable companion Roger Deakins. The editing was entrusted to William Goldenberg and Tim Squyres whose films Argo and The Life of Pi fought it out at the Oscars a few months earlier.
Jolie put together the cast with the help of Zamperini. She met with Louis the day after the project got the green light. When Angelina went to his house she realized that for the past ten years she had lived several blocks away from Louis’ home and every day drove past his gates. The neighbors chose the Brit Jack O’Connell for the main role. The director purposely chose amateur young actors believing that it would help the audience to believe in the events happening on screen. The producers approved this method though they were still shocked by her choice of candidate to play Watanabe. Miyavi is an incredibly popular musician in Japan for whom Unbroken was an acting debut. Jolie imagined him as the despotic camp sergeant, a person capable of instantaneously grabbing the attention of a giant mob. A skill that rock-stars tend to have in spades. All they had to do was replace the fans with captives.
Filming was done in Australia and took over three months. Over that period O’Connell became so skinny and weak that he would faint while filming the scenes with the beam. Also, Miyavi was so disgusted by the torture scenes that a few times he vomited between takes.
Scenes in the airplanes were shot with the help of green screens, and the month and a half drift in the Pacific Ocean was captured inside a huge cistern. The film required at least ten minutes of computer graphics which later seriously delayed the post-production process. Universal did not want to pay for any CGI until Angelina was certain that the scene would make it into the final cut. Even though the bosses understood that choosing a take without seeing at least a draft of what the effect would look like is like trying to follow a recipe while only guessing at the ingredients. This stage turned out to be the most difficult setback. The film crew had collected dozens of hours of material and Jolie had fallen in love with every frame. It took over a year of her sitting in the editing room until she cut the time down to a little over two hours. The process pushed back the premiere and the mass media even speculated that the studio had taken the editing rights away from Angelina, but the producers quickly dispelled that rumor.
MATTHEW BAER
quote 37:29
Unfortunately, the delay meant that Louis Zamperini didn’t get to attend the premiere of his biography. He died on the 2nd of July 2014. Two weeks earlier Angelina had shown him a draft version of the film on his laptop right in the hospital.
The premiere for Unbroken was only in December of 2014. The picture was dealt a blow by critics who wrote that despite its technical excellence, the directing was mediocre, the narrative drawn out and there were facts of Zamperini’s life that were omitted. In Japan, a petition was even created to forbid the film because of the false depiction of sadism in the prisons. However, the results at the box office exceeded expectations and went over the 150 dollar mark. The picture was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, also Angelina proved to Hollywood that she was capable of more than just playing sexy spies.
As if on purpose, after this gut-wrenching drama, Jolie immediately changed direction and for the first time in her career embarked on filming a project made by Disney studios.
Although… the actress had agreed to play Maleficent back in 2010 when the remake of Sleeping Beauty was abandoned by Tim Burton who had been working on the project for several years. He was replaced by Robert Stromberg. The debuting director was famous as an Art Director for films like Avatar and Alice Through the Looking Glass and as a visual effects specialist for a good number of Hollywood blockbusters. But despite two Oscars and the support of dozens of cult directors, Stromberg got the green light only after a contract with Jolie, because the producers had been preparing the movie especially with her in mind.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote 39:38
Once again Angelina joined the project on her own terms. She waved off the studio’s idea of a sexual persona and insisted on the creation of a costume that looked like the cartoon. The incredible makeup was done by Rick Baker. The artist was known thanks to his work on The Exorcist and the Star Wars Trilogy, plus in his forty-year career he had created hundreds of amazing characters for dozens of blockbusters and after Maleficent Baker retired declaring that he wasn’t getting any more interesting offers.
But back to Jolie. She was enchanted by Eleanor Audley who played the witch’s voice in the cartoon, so in order for her voice to sound like Audley, she practiced her pronunciation for more than three months. As for Maleficent’s laugh, it caused several members of Angelina’s family psychological trauma. She would search for just the right sound by scaring her children. The blood-curdling laughter made it to the screen. By the way, Pax and Zahara appeared in the christening scene where they genuinely got scared when they saw Maleficent. Vivienne Jolie-Pitt got to play five-year-old Aurora. The director chose Angelina’s daughter because the girl understood that under all that scary makeup was her mother, and behaved calmly in the scene while other children would get frightened or freeze up.
The role of the more mature princess was to be played by Kristen Stewart, but her busy schedule forced her to decline. Her replacement was Elle Fanning. Jolie was also in charge of choosing the actors since she not only played the main role but also produced the film. Angelina even chose Lana del Rey, whose song sounded during the credits. The influence on the future Maleficent reached the script as well, which was rewritten to include scenes from the original cartoon. Also, Angelina insisted that she do all her own stunts.
Her obsession with the role was proven justified after the release. Jolie’s first appearance on screen in four years brought her the best box office profits of her career. Maleficent made more than 750 million dollars and added some very young viewers to the actress’s army of fans. The critics were not far behind. Angelina was used to frigid press but this time all the jabs were directed at the overuse of computer graphics and 3D effects while the main character’s image provoked only admiration, and the success of Maleficent foreshadowed dozens of future remakes of classic Disney films.
Over the last twenty years, the actress’s personal life has interested society no less than her professional life, so it was expected that her wedding with Brad Pitt would be on the covers of hundreds of tabloids. The question of why they weren’t married worried journalists from what seems like the first days of their relationship. First, they answered that they “feel married as it is”, then they fought for equality and promised to get married only when members of the LGBT community would be granted the same right, then they said that they would marry if their children wanted it.
Well, the children wanted it so after ten years of doing life together Pitt and Jolie officially became a married couple. They invited their closest relatives and a few friends to the ceremony, and the main event was reading the wedding vows which were written by their kids. The event was closed to the press but later, following their tradition, they auctioned off the photographs of that day for 5 million dollars. In the photos, Angelina looked like a classic bride for the first time. Though her white Versace dress featured drawings by the pair’s youngest children.
Pitt and Jolie spent their honeymoon on the shores of Malta, where instead of alone time, they were shooting Angelina’s new film. She wrote the screenplay for the drama By the Sea in memory of her mother. The main characters of the story were named Vanessa and Ronald Bertrand in honor of Marcheline Bertrand. The story told of a couple on the brink of divorce that tries to give their relationship one last shot and take a vacation to France. Pain and suffering are interwoven with the visual beauty of this arthouse reel. Just the work of Christian Berger alone is amazing. He used light reflectors and diffusers to shoot the film only using natural lighting.
Jolie turned the grief for her mother into cinema, but the viewers didn’t really empathize with the main characters, since they were expecting more of the first sighting of Brad and Angelina on screen together in ten years, and more of the passion and the action from Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The 10 million dollar project made less than 500 thousand dollars at the box office and was sent to the store shelves on Blu-Ray. What the public did remember were the credits, where they saw Angelina’s hyphenated last name for the first time.
Unfortunately, Jolie-Pitt appeared on the screen the one time. The bitter irony is that only a year after playing a couple on the brink of divorce, Brad and Angelina filed their documents for one. The actress cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason. Yes, yes, the same differences which ten years earlier were mentioned by Jennifer Aniston. The court process for custody rights and for ownership of their assets dragged on for three years, and the marriage of the most popular couple in Hollywood was annulled in 2012.
During that period Jolie was able to play Tigress in the third part of Kung-Fu Panda, appear in a commercial for the perfume Mon Guerlain shot by Terrence Malick, and take a seat in the director’s chair for the third time in her career.
Her newest challenge was a film about the Cambodian Genocide. Angelina had seen the consequences of those events while shooting the first Tomb Raider. The destruction of people’s lives and the terror which millions live in changed her worldview, and the desire to tell the world about this story had been marinating for over fifteen years, during which she constantly involved herself in the country’s affairs. In 2003 Jolie bought a house in Battambang and created around it a wild natural reserve which was 7.5 hectares. It was named for Angie’s oldest son Maddox. Two years later after investing in the development of the country the king Norodom Sihanouk granted Angelina honorary Cambodian citizenship. Today, her fund continues to help those who suffered from the war and she is constantly visiting remote corners of the country with humanitarian missions.
In 2015 Jolie joined forces with the writer Loung Ung to write a screen adaptation of her book First They Killed My Father. The budget for the picture was provided by the streaming service Netflix, and it was filmed in the aforementioned Battambang. That was also where the director chose the acting ensemble, and the crowd scenes used over 3000 extras, most of whom were witnesses of those events. The cinematographer was the Oscar-winning Anthony Dod Mantle who became famous by working with Danny Boyle and Lars von Trier. Mantle brought exquisite compositions to a film that contained within itself a true nightmare.
Jolie shot the film in two months and spent a record-breaking 24 million dollars on production. This made the drama the most expensive Cambodian film in history, but it wasn’t just about the money. During the genocide of ‘77-’79, the Khmer Rouge wiped out the country’s cinema elite. The communists executed hundreds of actors, screenwriters, and directors, with only a few being able to escape. That caused the destruction of cinema in Cambodia, but the filming of a movie like this showed producers from around the world the potential of the new generation of Cambodians as well as the ability to safely spend time in the country.
For the first time in Angelina’s career, the critics praised her work with no “buts”. The piercingly truthful film about a war where each frame was in its place was Jolie’s greatest achievement in the director’s chair to date. Her success was confirmed at the awards ceremony. First They Killed My Father was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film.
Before the statuette season began Angelina returned to her role as Maleficent. The sequel was planned for 2014 and was attached to the 60th anniversary of the release of the original Sleeping Beauty.
And though the producers at Disney kept most of the team which worked on the first film, the sequel had a few radical changes. The director’s chair was taken by Joachim Rønning who had barely finished filming the fifth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. However, one of the main characters of the Captain Jack Sparrow saga didn’t return to the project. Brenton Thwaites who had played Prince Phillip in the first part had already signed a contract for the Titans TV series, so he was replaced by Harris Dickinson. Luckily, the cast was also joined by Michelle Pfeiffer and Angelina’s old friends Chiwetel Ejiofor (with whom she had acted in the thriller Salt) and Miyavi who had acted in her film Unbroken.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil as per usual didn’t disappoint the studio when they counted up the profit, but the critics attacked the plot which seemed much weaker than the potential of the acting ensemble.
The next project for the actress was also connected to Disney. The screen adaptation of the book The One and Only Ivan was released on the studio’s streaming service in August of 2020. The story tells of a gorilla that wants to reunite with its family in the jungle. Besides Jolie who plays the elephant Stella, the characters are voiced by actors like Helen Mirren, Sam Rockwell, and Danny De Vito. One of the main roles was played by Brian Cranston. The touching story charmed the press, and journalists noted the magnetism of the characters which enchanted their young audiences.
Another reel involving Angelina is the fantasy drama Come Away the release of which was delayed for half a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The gloomy tale about the origins of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan was directed by Brenda Chapman, a recognized director of cartoons whose list of works includes The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Prince of Egypt, and Brave. Her debut in live film was shown at the Sundance Festival and released in theaters on the 13th of November, 2020.
In 2021 Jolie will act in two exciting projects. The thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead is being filmed by Taylor Sheridan who wrote the screenplays to the films Sicario and Hell or Highwater and also directed a critic favorite Wind River. Angelina will play one of the main roles and return to R-rated action films for the first time in 12 years.
And of course, another expensive Disney project. Next year Angelina will enter the Marvel universe where she will appear in Eternals, the sequel to the Avengers. On screen the actress will join Selma Hayek and stars of The Game of Thrones Kit Harington and Richard Madden.
It’s too early to talk release dates as they could still change several times. Only one thing is certain. Over a quarter of a century, Angelina Jolie has with enviable regularity been able to astound with amazing performances and push the boundaries of her talent, so we can definitely expect a few surprises.