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By ABC News
May 21, 2014 8:35am
Disney’s latest retelling of Sleeping Beauty, from the point of view of the
villainous Maleficent, presents a classic story with a new twist.
Maleficent is one of the most iconic fairy tale villains, and she’s played in the film of the same name by
Angelina Jolie, one of the biggest stars in the industry.
Jolie said she was drawn to the character even as a young girl.
“When I was little … I didn’t relate to princesses,” she said in an interview with “
Good Morning America” co-anchor George Stephanopoulos. “I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so — she was so elegant.”
Jolie talked about getting Maleficent’s voice just right.
“I didn’t know what to do with the voice … so when I give my kids a
bath at night I would tell them stories in different voices,” she said,
adding that when she did “this particular voice they couldn’t stop
laughing.”
“The bigger I got, the more they laughed,” she said.
This is Jolie’s first film role in four years, but she certainly
hasn’t been out of the spotlight. Last year, she candidly shared
her decision to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. She made headlines, and possibly changed lives.
“I really didn’t know how people would react,” she said when
Stephanopoulos asked her what she thought of how people would respond to
her revelation. “I didn’t know if there would be some kind of strange
silly reaction.”
When Stephanopoulos asked if she was worried about it, she said: “I
wasn’t worried about it, but I didn’t expect there to be so much
support. And I was very moved by it. … It’s connected me so much to
other families, other women.”
“And you know, and now when I meet people, we don’t talk as much
about films, but we talk about their children, or women’s choices, or
their wives,” she added. “It’s been a really beautiful journey.”
Her openness on the issue is yet another example of Jolie using her
stardom to shine a light on social issues. It’s something she’s been
doing for more than a decade through her humanitarian work.
Stephanopoulos reminded her of a conversation they’d had in 2005,
when he asked her if she would ever think about entering politics. Back
then, she told him “no, no, I have way too many skeletons.”
He asked if she would reconsider her decision now.
“I wonder if by now if my skeletons are out. They’re probably all
out,” she said, laughing. “You know, if I thought I’d be effective, I
would. But I’m not sure if I would ever be taken seriously in that way,
and be able to be effective.”
Stephanopoulos also asked Jolie about when she would be getting married to partner Brad Pitt, with whom she has six children.
“We don’t have a date, and we’re not hiding anything, but we really
don’t know. We talk to the kids about it once in a while. … And one of
them suggested paintball. And we thought, ‘Well, different,’” she said,
laughing.
“So who knows,” Jolie said. “You know, I think the important thing is
that whatever we do it’s that the kids do have a great time, and we all
— you know, take seriously the love, and the connection between all of
us. But also just get silly and do something memorable.”
"When you know what you know about her, by the time you get to
(Aurora’s) christening, if we’ve done it right, you may be on her side,
which, if we can pull it off, would be extraordinary. Maleficent has a
strong sense of justice; she has a strong heart and a strong sense of
what she thinks is right and wrong; and then she loses her way.”
Jolie has reportedly been long interested in the role even when it
wallowed in developmental hell, with Tim Burton apparently dropping off
the project. Robert Stromberg, the production designer of “Alice in
Wonderland,” took over the project for his directorial debut.
Bringing her own ideas into the role, Jolie describes the character
as she knows her best. “What I loved about Maleficent when I was little
was that she had a wicked sense of fun. She enjoyed being evil and she
reveled in it. She still gets to do that and she will satisfy,
hopefully, the people that – like myself – are fans of the original. But
you get to learn more about her and how she became evil.”
She knows that there is a lot of heart in Maleficent’s story,
something that even her own kids could relate to. “I sat my girls down
and told them (her) real story. Then the next day, my little boy got
into a fight with one of my daughters because he was saying,
‘Maleficent’s evil. She’s scary and she’s evil.’ And my daughter was
saying, ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know everything.’ I thought
that was very interesting…”
Playing another strong character is a treat for Jolie, but even more
so in “Maleficent” because she got to work with her daughter, Vivienne
Jolie-Pitt. “The way I look (in character) just scares babies, (they
are) traumatized…When crew members brought their young kids, they would
cry and run away from me. So we realized that the only four-year-old
that would probably not run away from me was my own daughter. We had to
put Vivienne in the movie because no other little kid would allow me to
pick them up because I look so scary.”
Still, the adage “never work with kids (or animals)” holds true here.
“Kids want to do a scene once and they want to be done with it. They
don’t want to wear something that they don’t want to wear and they don’t
want to smile when they don’t feel like it,” Jolie says. “But Vivienne
did, in the end, have a good time because we made it fun.”
“Maleficent” opens in local cinemas on May 28.
