Angelina Jolie answers all our burning questions! http://t.co/tnTRRyT1Ng (Photo: Getty Images) pic.twitter.com/c27nA4rhWZ
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LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie is on the cusp of what is likely the most important year of her career. With her darker, big-budget take on Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, hitting theaters Friday, we sit down with the fairest of them all to tackle our burning questions.
1. When is the big day already?
It's official: She and Brad Pitt have been engaged for over two years, and together for 10. "We don't have any plans to get married at the moment. Nothing is organized. Nothing is ready. I don't have a dress," says Jolie. But she understands the interest. "It matters to us in a very private way. But we also understand that we're public people."
MORE: With 'Maleficent,' Angelina Jolie begins historic year
2. Which of her children had the strongest reaction to Maleficent?
Knox! "Every time he sees a bird outside the house, he wants me to go outside and change it into something. Instead I just say, 'No, I'm not changing anything but I will go speak to him.' So we bring the bird food and I have to talk to every black bird — in an English accent. (The children) often make me do the voice, regularly. Knox has perfected his, 'Well, well.' It's really good. And he tests other people in the house to see if they can do it. And he thinks Daddy doesn't do it well. But he's working on Daddy."
3. Will she and Brad really star in a movie together again?
It could happen! But it will be a small movie, she says. "I wrote something we've talked about maybe doing together. Something little and experimental. (John) Cassavetes-style." Maleficent screenwriter Linda Woolverton calls Jolie's writing style modern and "very funny." As for financing? "We have everything we need if we choose to do it. We're really considering it."
4. How are she and Pitt handling their brood growing up?
Maddox is 12, which makes him officially a tween (he even walked the blue carpet solo at Maleficent's L.A. premiere Wednesday). "It's very hard because the parental controls are so extreme," says the mom of six. "You wish there was some magic parental control that could just give them enough of the stuff they're excited about and interested in. You know, some crazy skateboarding stunt accidents, and still not be getting access to certain kinds of other things, drugs or nudity. But (those videos) kind of end up in the same category."
5. What's all this talk about retirement?
"I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress," says Jolie. "It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn't. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues. I'll do a few more films and enjoy it and if I'm blessed to have a good career, but I've never loved it like I love other things."
6. How is Jolie's health?
After last year's reveal that Jolie chose to undergo a preventative double mastectomy, "I'm healthy and happy," she says, sharing that directing the World War II epic Unbroken has helped get her back on track. "That's really been the center of my focus, even through the choice to take care of my health, and Louis (Zamperini, the POW Laura Hillenbrand's novel is based on) was inspirational for that."
LOS ANGELES — An aide runs down the hall. The air changes. The discreetly dressed bodyguard stiffens. Like the prick of a finger on a spindle, that's how you know Angelina Jolie is approaching.
Inside a hotel room, Jolie sips on a diet soda and takes a seat on the couch, her slim legs tucked into a pair of Christian Louboutins she's been wearing lately; they were designed for her, in honor of Maleficent.
The actress sits like a spring; hours of Unbroken footage await her laser-like director's eye. "As soon as I leave today, I go to the editing room," she says wryly, her blue-green eyes momentarily distant.
But first, her dark fairy calls.
What makes a villain?
Maleficent, the big-budget Disney live-action tale (in theaters Friday), was conceived over four years ago with Jolie in mind. The villain was just to her suiting: tough, misunderstood and in total command of every room she enters.
Linda Woolverton, the scribe behind Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and 2010's Alice in Wonderland, has recast Maleficent, who first appeared in Sleeping Beauty, as a dark fairy whose life began innocently, but turned villainous after a childhood friend (we know him as King Stefan) betrays her and steals her powerful wings.
"She is still a villain," says Jolie. "She does, in fact, curse a child. But that people can be villainous and still there is much more to them, and to understand what causes people to be villainous, is important."
Jolie chuckles at the amount of time it's taken to bring the Disney fairy tale to life. "I've never really been a part of a film with all the effects and the 3-D conversion," says the actress.
On the U.K. set, Jolie donned towering horns, gold contacts, sharp prosthetic cheekbones and menacing molars to become Maleficent. She also used her Oscar-winning chops to flesh out her fairy. "There were tears on the set" the day Maleficent lost her wings, says director Robert Stromberg. "You could feel the emotion while we were shooting that."
An extra dose of sweetness comes courtesy of Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, who appears as Toddler Aurora, briefly. The then-3-year-old twin sister of Knox (now 5) was the only child they could cast who wouldn't have a meltdown at the sight of those horns. Instead, she climbed her mother's cloaked legs, demanding, "Up, up."
How did Maleficent go down in the Jolie-Pitt household?
"Knox, of course, believes everything and he loves Diaval, he wants to dye his hair black," Jolie says with a laugh, referring to Maleficent's sidekick (played by Sam Riley), who can change into a variety of animals. Shiloh "cried when I get hurt. And then she got angry."
Maddox and Pax "liked the battle scenes best, of course, " she says. "And the dragons and the flying."
Knowing what awaits as their brood enters teenage years makes scenes of Teenage Aurora (played by Elle Fanning) and Maleficent clashing all the more amusing. Maddox, her eldest, is 12 now. The term "tween" gets a laugh out of Jolie. Does their relationship now require a different toolbox as a parent?
"Yes!" she says ruefully (Jolie adopted Maddox in Cambodia in 2002 when he was 7 months old). "It's like we have a new relationship. He comes over to me, he works in my office a few days a week in the editing bay and works on some script breakdowns and does some stuff for me in the edits and helps get me a coffee."
She laughs. "He can also make a mess of my office — he's kind of taken over. But it's just trying to find a new way to communicate with him, not just treating him like a little boy."
Balancing act
Two years ago, when this reporter visited Maleficent's U.K.-based set, Jolie and Pitt were newly engaged. The topic was largely taboo in her presence. Today, she has an easy answer for the curious: The couple have no plans for a wedding. She has no dress. She's not wearing her engagement ring today, having subbed it out for a simple double diamond band.
What she has, though she refrains from connecting these dots verbally, is an approaching due date to deliver Unbroken to Universal. The epic is based on Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling World War II tale of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track star-turned-U.S. soldier who becomes a brutalized prisoner of war.
Last year, she and Pitt even broke a long-held vow that they would never overlap their work schedules. But while she shot Unbroken in Australia, Pitt spent time in London, shooting Fury.
Directing her future
Unbroken is being positioned to drop at Christmas, in the heart of awards season. That makes Jolie's 2014 tentatively historic for women in film. While women directors of tougher fare, such as Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), have proven they can win the box office and the awards circuit, it's a small club, to put it kindly.
Would a home run for Jolie reverberate through Hollywood? It may empower studio heads to put more women at the helm of hard-hitting, big-budget movies, says IMDB.com managing editor Keith Simanton. "I think anytime you have established precedent, such as, 'Look at Kathryn Bigelow. Look at Angelina Jolie in Unbroken,' you take that one argument away," he says.
"I look at her and I just think she's kind of fearless," says Fanning. "Which is so inspiring to me. All of her goals she wants to do, she's doing them. And she's succeeding at them, hugely. That's really big for me to see her put her mind to it and actually get it done. And be so elegant along the way."
Jolie may have a tougher time with praise than she shows. "I don't know if I'm a perfectionist as much as I'm really hard on myself," she says, always questioning if she did enough. "I can accomplish many things and feel like I've accomplished nothing."
But bringing Maleficent to life and setting her free to fly in 3-D? "If I was going to ever do a Disney one, this is the one I wanted to do," says Jolie. "And I think we've done it well."
