We all have times in our lives where we just feel broken ...
Angelina Jolie returns to her action roots with new thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. She tells LAURA HARDING why making it was cathartic
IT’S hard to imagine a time Angelina Jolie did not feel strong. The actress has always seemed as tough as can be, making her name playing fearless females in movies including Tomb Raider, Mr & Mrs Smith, Salt, and Wanted.
But life has not always imitated art and the mother of-six came to her latest film, the thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead – in which she plays a smokejumper, a specially trained wildland firefighter – feeling anything but strong.
“I think we all have times in our lives where we just feel broken,” she says candidly as she chats on Zoom, dressed immaculately in a cream silk blouse.
“I came into this not feeling strong at all, and not knowing if I had it even in me to pull through this.
“Like everybody, I carry my own trauma, my own grief, different things that have happened in my life.
“And so it was very cathartic. Can I pull myself through? Can I get to the other end of this? Am I strong enough? Am I stable enough?”
The 45-year-old has certainly been through a turbulent time over the years.
She had a preventative double mastectomy in 2013 after discovering she had an elevated risk of developing breast cancer due to a gene mutation, and developed Bell’s palsy and hypertension (high blood pressure) following a particularly difficult time in her personal life.
She split from her third husband Brad Pitt, with whom she shares six children, in 2016 after a decade together and legal proceedings surrounding their divorce are ongoing in Los Angeles.
In recent years, Angelina, who won an Oscar for her performance as a troubled young woman in Girl, Interrupted 20 years ago, has stepped behind the camera to direct with projects including In The Land Of Blood And Honey, Unbroken, By The Sea, and First They Killed My Father.
In her new film, directed by Hell Or High Water’s Taylor Sheridan, her character Hannah is reeling from the loss of three lives she failed to save from a fire, when she comes across a traumatised 12-year-old boy.
She helps him flee a pair of assassins, played by About A Boy’s Nicholas Hoult and Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen, after a deadly attack on his father, and the pair brave lightning storms and a huge fiery blaze in a bid to outrun them.
Angelina admits she felt trepidation about delving back into such a physical challenge.
“It did feel new,” she reflects on the action scenes. “I’m older, and it’s not just that my body was different, it was just that I’m different.
“It’s been about a decade or so since I’ve done anything like that.
“Then of course there’s that moment at the beginning where you think, ‘What am I doing?’
“And my kids (Maddox, 19, Pax, 17,
Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12) are not used to seeing me do these things because really, during the ages they were growing up, I was directing.
“So it was kind of like Mom did that a long time ago, so
Mom doing any of that is almost funny to my children now, but I think actually it was really good for them.
“It was nice to see me survive and be strong. But it was weird, I definitely had it in my mind, thinking maybe I’m not capable of this anymore.”
The A-lister is joined in the
film by co-stars The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal, who plays a local law enforcement officer, and his heavily pregnant wife Allison, played by Medina Senghore, who offer a potential safe haven for Connor and Hannah.
“One of the things that I love about the movie is it’s set in this small town in the American West, and everyone in the town knows the state of grief and difficulty that Angelina’s character Hannah is in,” says Medina, who is best known for the TV series Happy!.
“But what you see is her colleagues, and everyone, at some point holds space for Hannah in some way and that’s what we need in life from the people around us, when we’re going through it – for them to hold us up and give us grace and give us time.”
Also there to hold Angelina up was director Taylor.
“Angie was game,” he says. “She did it all, she did a lot of her own stunts. It’s sort of a requirement of the way that I film because I try to place the audience as a voyeur right in the middle of the action.
“If it’s not the actor, they’re going to see that, so it requires a real physical commitment.”
The story takes place in Montana, outside Cooke City, just north of Yellowstone
National Park, a familiar landscape for fans of Taylor’s other work, which includes the Emily Blunt movie Sicario and the TV series Yellowstone.
“It’s a part of America that Taylor loves and knows and represents – with respect – the idiosyncrasies, the grandeur of its parks, and the poetry of this part of the world,” Angelina says.
“I was happy to toughen up and get dirty and sweaty, to do things I’ve never done and feel very capable.
“Taylor taught me how to chop wood and start a fire. Now he needs to teach me how to ride a horse.”
■ Those Who Wish Me Dead is in cinemas from tomorrow