Wednesday, March 5, 2014




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Angelina Jolie recounts 'all the kindness' that helped her through her health scare -- EXCLUSIVE

By on Mar 5, 2014 at 12:00PM

In this week’s cover story, Entertainment Weekly explores Angelina Jolie’s new role as the Disney villain in Maleficent — frightening small children (including her own), and trying to find the human side of someone so evil.
But at the end of our exclusive interview with actress, we also talked about something good she did: coming forward last May in the New York Times op-ed “My Medical Choice” to detail her decision to have a double mastectomy after genetic tests showed she was at risk for breast cancer.
The surprising revelation? The very people she had hoped to help ended up helping her.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Exactly a year ago, you were in the middle of having your surgeries. I’m just wondering, how are you today?ANGELINA JOLIE: I’m great! I’m very happy I made the decision. I was very fortunate to have great doctors and very, very fortunate to have a good recovery and have a project like Unbroken [the World War II survival story she is directing] to have something to be really focused on, to be getting healthy for, and to be able to just get right back to work.

You could have kept your decision a secret. But you wrote that essay for The New York Times, urging other women to get tested. What kind of reaction have you gotten from that?
I feel very, very close — much closer — to other women, and women who are going through the same thing. Wherever I go, usually I run into women and we talk about health issues, women’s issues, breast cancer, ovarian cancer. I’ve talked to men about their daughters’ and wives’ health. It makes me feel closer to other people who deal with the same things and have either lost their parents or are considering surgeries or wondering about their children. … The reason that I wrote it was to try to communicate and help and connect with other women and other families going through the same thing. And … I was very, very moved by all the support and kindness from so many people.

It makes you embarrassed to talk about that part, doesn’t it?
[Smiles] Yeah, a little bit.

I imagine you must get mail …
I do, and it’s lovely.

Was the reaction helpful for you, personally?
There’s still another surgery to have, which I haven’t yet [Jolie is also genetically at risk for ovarian cancer, which is what took her mother’s life at age 56]. I’ll, you know, I’ll get advice from all these wonderful people who I’ve been talking to, to get through that next stage.

For all these stories and more, pick up the new issue of EW, on stands Friday, March 7.







People

Angelina Jolie: Family Makes Me Feel 'Like a Kid Again'

By Gillian Telling
03/05/2014 at 01:00 PM EST

Though she's facing another surgery (she's at risk for ovarian cancer, from which her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died in 2007), she's focused on the little joys of her life: her children Maddox, 12, Pax, 10, Zahara, 9, Shiloh, 7, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 5.

"Outside my home I can be somewhat serious," she admits. But with her family, "We laugh and we play, and I'm light again, and I'm a kid again, and I'm loving and soft again because they've brought that back in my life."

Read the rest in People


















When someone says: You would be perfect to play one of the cruelest fantasy villains of all time — is that a compliment or an insult?

In the case of Disney’s Maleficent (out May 30), the whole world pretty much agreed Angelina Jolie should play the black-horned bad-girl. ”It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain,” she says with a laugh (not a cackle).

In this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, the actress gives her first in-depth interview about Disney’s revisionist take on Sleeping Beauty, which retells the classic folk tale from the wicked point-of-view. “The exercise wasn’t how can we have fun with a villain?” Jolie says. “It was: What turns people evil and vile and aggressive and cruel? What could have possibly happened to her?”

In the wide-ranging conversation, Jolie also discusses Unbroken, the true-life tale of World War II heroism that she directed and is currently editing, and addresses the cancer worries that led her to undergo a preventative double mastectomy last year — penning a New York Times op-ed afterward about the experience, hoping to inspire and encourage others facing such a choice.

“Wherever I go, usually I run into women and we talk about health issues, women’s issues, breast cancer, ovarian cancer. I’ve talked to men about their daughters’ and wives’ health. It makes me feel closer to other people who deal with the same things and have either lost their parents or are considering surgeries or wondering about their children,” she says. “I was very, very moved by all the support and kindness from so many people.”

The new issue also includes EW’s Oscar coverage, with our report on the show behind the show — all the drama that took place just offstage in the wings of the Dolby Theatre as the presenters went on and the winners came off. Plus: ”Burning Questions” from the show, the best and worst of red carpet fashions, and behind-the-scenes shots from rehearsals leading up to the ceremony.

For all these stories and more, pick up the new issue of EW, on stands Friday, March 7.






When Angelina Jolie told her kids she was thinking of playing the live-action version of Sleeping Beauty’s villainess in Maleficent, her six children all had the same response: NO!

“They went, ‘She’s so scary!’” Jolie tells EW this week, in her first in-depth interview about the film (out May 30).

Only Vivienne, one of her and Brad Pitt’s youngest children, proved not to be scared by the intimidating black horns and icy cackle. The now-5-year-old even ended up playing a young version of Princess Aurora in the film (as seen in this exclusive new image). But that casting was done more out of necessity than ambition.

“We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and I at all,” Jolie says. “But the other 3- and 4-year-old [performers] wouldn’t come near me. It had to be a child that liked me and wasn’t afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be Viv.”

To convince her brood of little ones that mom should take the part, the actress says she gathered them together for story time to explain the fantasy film’s take on the self-proclaimed “Mistress of All Evil.” By the time she detailed the character’s new origin, there was definitely sympathy for this devil.

“I said, ‘Let me tell you the real story but you can’t tell anybody,’” she recalls. “So this was my test too, like any parent. The next day, I heard Shiloh getting into a fight with another kid, defending Maleficent, saying, ‘You don’t understand her!’ They got into a bit of an argument and I thought, that’s the reason to do the film.”

It’s not that Maleficent is justified, but this story shows how she became misguided. “When that character makes mistakes — which Maleficent does, and crosses many lines — you want them to be angry at her and concerned and confused and in the end, somehow understand something that they didn’t know before,” Jolie says.

It still took awhile for the older kids to get used to her malevolent new appearance, though.

“When Pax saw me for the first time, he ran away and got upset — and I thought he was kidding, so I was pretending to chase him until I actually found him crying,” Jolie says. “I had to take off pieces [of the makeup] in front of him to show him it was all fake and not freak out so much.”

Eventually they got used to it. Pax and Zahara also turn up as extras in the famous christening scene, when Maleficent appears to place the sleeping curse on the kingdom’s infant princess. “I had to walk by them being very mean,” Jolie says. “Of course, I wanted to stop and wink at them.”


eonline

"We think it's fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors," she says. "That's not the goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn't become actors."
According to Jolie, it was only out of necessity that she and Brad Pitt put their little girl in the movie. "She was 4 at the time, and other 3- and 4-year-old [actors] really wouldn't come near me. Big kids thought I was cool—but little kids really didn't like me," says the Academy Award winner, who has five more children with Pitt. "So in order to have a child that wants to play with [Maleficent]...it had to be a child that really liked me and wasn't afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be Viv."
Some of the Jolie-Pitt kids were afraid of the Sleeping Beauty villain, however. "I told my kids I was playing Maleficent, and they went, 'She's so scary!' and I said, 'Let me tell you the real story, but you can't tell anybody.' And I put them in the room and told them the story. So this was my test too, like any parent. And the next day I heard Shiloh getting into a fight with another kid, defending Maleficent. Saying, 'You don't understand her!'"
After witnessing the argument, Jolie felt compelled to take the role. "It's not just that there's more to people than meets the eye, but that there's injustice in the world and children get fired up about injustice. [They] want the character they believe in to get up and fight. And when that character makes mistakes—which Maleficent does—and crosses many lines, you want them to be angry at her and concerned and confused and, in the end, somehow understand something they didn't know before."
Jolie also opens up about what life's been like after getting a preventative double mastectomy in 2013.
"I'm great!" she says. "I'm very happy I made the decision. I was very fortunate to have great doctors and very, very fortunate to have a good recovery and have a project like Unbroken to have something to be really focused on, to be getting healthy for, and to be able to just get right back to work."
...
"I feel very, very close—much closer—to other women, and women who are going through the same thing. Wherever I go, usually I run into women and we talk about health issues, women's issues, breast cancer, ovarian cancer," Jolie tells Entertainment Weekly. "I've talked to men about their daughters' and wives' health. It makes me feel closer to other people who deal with the same things and have either lost their parents or are considering surgeries or wondering about their children."
Jolie adds, "The reason that I wrote it was to try to communicate and help and connect with other women and other families going through the same thing. I was very, very moved by all the support and kindness from so many people."

Read the rest in eonline






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