Jolie: I didn’t exploit slum children in my auditions
ANGELINA Jolie yesterday fiercely denied playing ‘cruel’ tricks on impoverished Cambodian children while holding auditions for a film. The actress, 42, last week described a casting exercise in which children were given money and then had it taken from them. She told Vanity Fair they were also asked to come up with a reason why they needed it. The mother-of-six added she wanted to elicit an ‘authentic connection to pain’ and auditioned children from orphan- ages, circuses and slum schools because they had endured hardship. The Netflix film, First They Killed My Father, is set in 1975 Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge seized power and began a campaign of slaughter. Miss Jolie, who co-wrote and directed the film, was accused of being ‘emotionally abusive and cruel’. But in a statement she said: ‘I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. ‘Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children.’
‘False and upsetting’