If Angelina Jolie ever makes good on her promise to retire early from acting, she might have a second career as a stunt woman.
On the set of “Salt,” her high-octane, $100 million spy thriller, the actress risked life and limb to shimmy along the ledge of a 12-story building, sprint over the top of vehicles and leap out of a moving helicopter.
Jolie says there’s a good reason why she’s so quick on her feet these days.
“I have kids, and they are all over the place,” she explains with a laugh. “The twins are going in different directions at the same time … and they can run faster (than me). But Z (daughter Zahara) is the fastest in the house.”
Over the course of shooting action films like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Wanted,” Jolie has performed her share of daredevil moves but strolling along the ledge of a 12-story building was a frightening experience even for her.
“I had a moment (of fear) my first day because I hadn’t worked for a year and a half, and I’d been at home, and I’d had the babies,” says the actress. “So, on my first day back I thought, ‘What am I doing? I’m somebody’s mother.’”
That moment quickly passed, though, reports the movie’s executive producer Ric Kidney.
“Angie was absolutely so game, you almost began to think of her as a stunt person,” he says. “She was the first person volunteer. Loves heights. Loves looking down.”
Lest you think Brad Pitt, Jolie’s companion of five years, is one of those spouses who stands on the sidelines providing words of caution, think again.
“Remember, I met Brad while doing stunts together (on ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’), so we’re that kind of family,” says Jolie. “It’s expected for mom to go out and do something like that.”
It was, in fact, Jolie’s desire to do “something like that” which helped bring “Salt” to the big screen in the first place.
Initially, Tom Cruise was interested in the role of Edwin Salt, a CIA agent who’s accused of being a sleeper spy by a Russian defector. With the clock ticking, Salt must clear his name, avert an assassination and outrun the bad guys. Then he opted out, citing “Salt’s” similarity to the “Mission: Impossible” movies. Enter Jolie, whose name came up as a possible replacement thanks to a conversation she’d had years earlier with Columbia Pictures CEO Amy Pascal. The Edwin character was changed to Evelyn for Jolie.
“Over lunch, Amy asked me about (playing a Bond girl), and I jokingly said, ‘I want to play Bond.’ We had a laugh. Then, about two or three years later, she called me up and said, ‘I think I found your Bond movie.’ I said, ‘All right.’ She said, ‘His name is Edwin.’ I went, ‘Sounds sexy. Send it over.’”
What Jolie couldn’t have known when she began work on the film was how timely it would become in the summer of 2010. After the arrest of a sleeper cell of agents, including the attractive Anna Chapman, “Salt” feels like it was ripped from the headlines.
“We never meant to do a movie that … would get people paranoid,” says the actress, an Oscar winner for “Girl, Interrupted” and the star of dramas like “Changeling” and “A Mighty Heart.” “That was never our intention. We just wanted to tell a good story … but I think people will look at the film very differently now. We had no understanding that (we were) that close to (reality).”
Before she came onboard, Jolie asked for a crash rewrite of the script which trimmed Salt of most of his/her family. In the original version, Edwin’s wife and child played a major role. But Jolie was adamant that Evelyn Salt be allowed to become an unsentimental warrior without parental obligations.
“If Evelyn had a child, I felt you’d be watching the movie, wondering why I wasn’t taking care of the child, or why I wasn’t taking the child with me, and it would become a film about me and a child,” says Jolie. “And that wasn’t something that suited the film. So, that was the first call: ‘We don’t say I love you, and there’s no child.’”
Jolie might be opposed to having dependents onscreen, but off-screen she has more than her share. Since 2002, when she adopted a Cambodian baby boy named Maddox, now 8, she’s expanded her family to include two more adopted children Zahara, 5, and Pax, 6. She and Pitt also have three biological children: Shiloh, 4, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 2.
Motherhood changed the former Hollywood wild child.
“I’ve become more patient and more silly,” says Jolie. “I just wake up with an immediate, constant reminder of exactly what’s important, and so ever since having children, I’m never thrown from that. Children are very grounding because they just keep you on track with all the pleasures and joys of life.”
And life is good for Jolie.
“I feel so fortunate that I’m able to do things that I love. When your work is a pleasure for you, you should be so grateful. I’m grateful to have my health and my kids’ health, and I’m just happy to be busy everyday.”
Up next for Jolie is “The Tourist,” a thriller that teams the actress for the first time with Johnny Depp. Behind the camera is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who directed the German film “The Lives of Others,” which Jolie calls “one of the greatest movies of all time.”
In the new film, a throwback to sexy thrillers like “Charade” and “To Catch a Thief,” Depp plays an American sightseer who crosses paths in Paris and Venice with a mystery woman played by Jolie.
“The setting is beautiful and there’s romance, but it’s also funny and a good thriller,” she says of the movie, which opens next Feb. 16. “There’s something just really, really enjoyable about it. We actually sat down and thought, ‘How can we make this as much fun to watch as possible?’”
Jolie is attached to a handful of other projects as well, but in a recent Vanity Fair cover story she hinted that she plans to retire early from the movie business.
Asked to clarify those statements, she says, “I’m somebody who likes to be very, very busy. I’m kind of energized to do things. I don’t sit down well and relax, so I’m always reading something or thinking about something or going off to make something.
“But I just imagine in the years to come. … It’s not that I’m retiring, but there will be less films at some point, and I’d love to do other things. I’d love to live in Africa for six months and fly planes. I’d just like to see what else there is to do. Artistically, I’m sure there are other things to do as well.”
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