Angelina Jolie is a mother of six with an absolute determination to halt the suffering of children in wars. But, recently, it was the actress herself who was causing unnecessary distress.
One would-be child actor after another was taken to meet her on the set of her latest movie, Disney’s Maleficent, to see if they fitted the bill to play the five-year-old heroine, Princess Aurora.
Jolie talks about her role and the making of Maleficent:
But when they were confronted by Angelina in full scary make-up and costume as Maleficent, the Mistress of All Evil — complete with black horns, long sharp nails, a forbidding face and a voice that hisses: “I don’t like children” — all of them ran quickly back into the arms of their parents, clearly upset.
“And I couldn’t blame them for that,” says Angelina. “Maleficent puts a spell on Sleeping Beauty, is driven by revenge and has the hard-edged looks to match. I think if I were a child, I’d be pretty frightened of me, too!
“But we needed someone small to play Princess Aurora opposite me in a scene and not be terrified at the prospect.
“I asked my seven year-old daughter Shiloh if she would do it, and she said: ‘Mummy, I’d rather be a horned creature like you.’ Which only left my five-year-old daughter Vivienne to step up to the plate.
“We were getting desperate to find a child who wasn’t going to burst into tears as soon as they looked at me, and Vivienne played the part perfectly.
“But will it start her on a career in acting? Gee, I hope not!
“To Brad and I she is still this sweet, young girl who just happened to be around to play this particular scene when nobody else would do it.
“Do I imagine her, or any of our children, becoming actors? Look, I just want my children to be happy, and if acting is what is going to make them happy then fine, let them pursue that career. But I would rather they did something else with their lives if I am perfectly honest, and I wouldn’t necessarily encourage Vivienne to be in any more movies.
“After two days of shooting that scene with her, Brad and I were so stressed we vowed we’d never go through the experience again.”
It may not only be Vivienne who sees her movie career halted in its tracks. Angelina, 38, has her own under review.
At the very least, acting is going to have to compete for her time with a range of other commitments.
“It is going to take more of a back seat,’ she explains.
“I don’t think actors ever retire. I don’t think I would ever reach a point in life where I would say to myself: ‘Right, that’s the last time I ever step in front of a camera.’
“I enjoy it too much to do that. But, for certain, you will see less of me acting in the future.
“I still get a kick out of being on set and I appreciate the opportunities that have come my way. But I would like to do a lot of writing, producing and directing, although my humanitarian work is very important to me.”
The actress is a Special Envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “I will be in London next month, co-hosting [with Foreign Secretary William Hague] the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, and it’s one of the most important events in which I have ever been involved,” she says.
“The suffering of innocents in a time of war — whether it’s women, children, whoever it might be — is a crisis the world must address quickly.”
Angelina, dressed in a figure-hugging white linen dress and white high-heeled shoes, sounds rather like a politician at this point, and one wonders if that is the world into which she is heading.
It’s certainly true that her acting work has been more sporadic in recent years: Maleficent is the first movie since The Tourist in 2010 in which she has actually appeared on screen (she provided a voice for Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011).
And it’s also true that her recent performances haven’t made quite the same impact as those during the early years of her career.
TV films Gia and George Wallace, as well as Girl, Interrupted, won her a stack of awards, including an Oscar for her performance in the latter in 2000.
Angelina’s only films to make big impressions since have been Changeling in 2008, for which she won an Oscar nomination, and before that the thriller Mr And Mrs Smith in 2005, during the filming of which she met her future partner Brad Pitt.
Angelina’s on-screen exile might still be going on if she had followed her first instinct and turned down the role of Maleficent.
“I was really moved by the script, but almost said no,” she reveals. “I couldn’t get away from the fact that my character puts a curse on the infant Princess Aurora.
“Sure it’s a fantasy movie, with my character stepping right out of Disney’s 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, but it’s the kind of action which is indefensible.
“In the end, I decided that I had to lighten Maleficent if I was going to play her, make her more a pantomime villain than an out-and-out baddie; draw on all that wicked fun in the character that I remembered from the Sleeping Beauty movie, so that her actions wouldn’t seem quite so reprehensible.
“I’d go home and be in a playful mood with my children because I’d have been embracing the bizarre and silly side of my nature during the day’s filming at Pinewood.
“Playing Maleficent brought out the child in me and acted like a breath of fresh air. I think there’s a side to me — maybe a side to everybody — that wants to be completely free and have unfettered fun.
“Maleficent has no boundaries, she is not restricted by any sort of convention, and I had a lot of fun channeling that.
“And here’s another role that my children and my grandchildren can watch in years to come.
“At the moment, I’m not sure they fully appreciate my back catalogue, or, indeed, fully grasp the make-believe nature of movie acting.”
Her six children, the older three of whom are adopted, range in age from five to 12.
“Mr And Mrs Smith is definitely a headspin for them, watching their parents fighting as spies. That’s some kind of childhood fantasy!
“My five-year-old son Knox watched me in Tomb Raider [the Lara Croft movie from 2001] the other day and is now convinced I can do all the amazing stunts in it.
“I’m still waiting for the right moment to tell him that, sadly, Mummy can’t!”
Maleficent is out in the UAE tomorrow.
