An Interview with Angelina Jolie

From Entertainment Weekly

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Wow, so you caused quite a stir at the Oscars. That’s usually a pretty stuffy affair, but you definitely widened people’s eyes.

 
ANGELINA JOLIE: [Laughs.] I don’t pay any attention to that stuff. I just heard something as simple as that and thought, well, I don’t know. I do what I feel like doing, but don’t actually consider the effect. I just try to, you know, be as I feel like being on a night like that.

Fashion websites say that pose is becoming a trend. Other actresses and models, like Jennifer Lawrence at The Hunger Games premiere, are wearing dresses with the high slit and posing with their legs out. So on behalf of guys everywhere, allow me to say, thank you very much.

 
[Laughs] That’s funny, very funny.

You’ve heard of Tebowing, right? Where people imitate Tim Tebow by getting down on one knee.

 
Uh-huh, I have.

There are whole websites that popped up where people were striking your pose. That must have caught you by surprise.

 
What’s funny is when you have no actual, conscious thought of anything [like that]. You just feel like, ‘eh, I like this dress. I feel comfortable in this one.’ It’s interesting that you just really never know …

You pulled it off much better than Jim Rash [pictured, the best adapted screenplay winner who struck her provocative pose onstage after shepresented him the Oscar.] Did you find what he did funny?

 
Of course! [Laughs.] No, I had a great night. It was a really fun night.

Just before the Oscars, you came home from the European premieres of In the Land of Blood and Honey. I imagine that must have been pretty emotional. It’s a heavy movie to live with for a couple of years, but you were finally showing it to the people who lived through the Bosnian War.

 
Yeah, it was more challenging because we knew we’d be going face to face with the region itself. We went to Berlin first, then Sarajevo, then Paris and also Croatia. This whole process has been very nerve-wracking because it’s my first film, and I’m not that confident, but I wanted to do this because I love the subject matter and I wanted to learn. I had these great two years where I learned so much about a region and history and worked with these actors from another part of the world.

Let’s start with how it was received in Paris and Berlin.

 
It was also difficult for them. They were right next door. So there’s a question of when [the U.S.] got involved, but they were right next door and didn’t get involved. There are a lot of feelings for everybody, deep-seeded guilt in all of us. Nobody walks away feeling good about this time in history. [The film] is supposed to make us look back and question what went wrong.

During filming, you dealt with a lot of false rumors that this was a twisted romance about a rapist. First it was a Bosnian women’s group…

 
It was the Bosnians at first, but then it switched to the Serbian side later, though not all Serbian people. Both times when things got heated, neither side had seen the film.

And you lost your permits to film until you showed the script to the Bosnian cultural ministry to prove it wasn’t anything like that.

 
Leading up to it, there were lots of questions on all sides, and lots of speculation. That speculation was causing people to be threatening toward the movie. They didn’t know, and heard rumors, and of course they’re scared and they’re sensitive. The war is still very fresh. We all got caught in the moment of that [controversy], but fortunately it was more of a moment.

When you were finally showing the public at large what the movie was really about, I imagine you felt some relief in addition to nerves.

 
In Serbia and Croatia, I just walked in with arms open and said I had no ill intentions, so strike as you will. I love Bosnia so much, so emotionally for me, if this was going to be a place I might hurt in some way, or not be welcome in any way, it would have really broken my heart. That’s really hard when you care and have become close to so many people there.

Where did you show the film?

 
They wanted to screen it for over 6,000 people in what was the Olympic stadium [used in the 1984 Winter Games]. During the war it became a morgue, so to go back and walk out on stage in front of 6,000 people … You don’t know if they going to throw something at you, or God knows what. I was there with the cast, who are all from different sides of the conflict. But we had a beautiful positive reaction, and then we all broke down and cried.

During the movie?

 
When we came out after. We didn’t know what we were going to walk out in front of, but it was very, very moving. Then we met with victims from the war after, and basically stayed up until three in the morning crying, with people telling different stories about their experiences. That’s the most beautiful thing that could come out of this, getting people talking again, even if it means sometimes getting people upset. You debate again.

You’ve said you’re writing a script about the war in Afghanistan next. How’s that coming along?

 
I have been writing something, because I’ve been there a few times — Afghanistan and Pakistan — in the last 11 years, and it’s a part of the world we’re all quite aware of now, but … I’m not sure. I’m going to actually see this weekend what people think of [the script.] But I like it and I’ve enjoyed doing the research.

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