Angelina Jolie open up with Newsweek magazine December 2011 issue! By Janine di Giovanni and Photograph by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello.
Jolie‘s approach to her humanitarian work: “When I go somewhere, I am always willing to learn about it. I get briefings, I read books, I talk to people,” she said. “But mainly I try to go somewhere to bring awareness, to come home and pick up the phone and call someone and try to get something done.”
She brings the same approach to filmmaking: She told me that when it came to the technicalities of making a film, “I wasn’t afraid to ask the DP [director of photography]. And I listened to my cast, most of whom lived through the war. I listened to their stories and tried to incorporate it into the work.”
Lack of real-time awareness of the Bosnian War: How could a woman who was only 17 when the conflict in Bosnia erupted in April 1992 have so perfectly captured the horror of a war that focused largely on indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians? She is honest when she says, “At the time, I had no idea of the extent of the agony.” But her work as an ambassador to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees exposed her to the plight of the Bosnian civilians and how the aftermath lingers on. The women who were raped in the infamous eastern Bosnian “rape camps” are still suffering from the emotional and traumatic fallout; it was an especially sensitive point for her.
No offense: “The people felt as though the world had forgotten them,” Jolie said. “It was a time of great pain, and I wanted to depict how courageous people were—without offending anyone.” The Bosnians desperately wanted help, from anywhere, anyone—but no one came. Even now, too few people know what happened there. Perhaps it takes the star power of someone like Jolie to remind them of this incredibly complex, bloody conflict. “It was made to remind everybody of the war—but only a small group of people will really understand,” she admitted.
The film is partially improvised: “It was half script, half improvisation,” Jolie said of some of the scenes, and she relied heavily on local staff. “The white shirt that the leading character wears throughout,” she mused at one point. “It stayed white through the rape-camp scenes—and it bothered me. We kept talking about that white shirt.” She also shows characters longing for food, for contact with the outside world, for books, cinema, poetry—all the things that existed before the war.
Writing the script: These journeys gave Jolie the experience to write the script for In the Land of Blood and Honey, which took “about a month, then it went through a lot of revisions, Brad read it, people read it,” but the actual technicalities of directing must have been daunting.
Approaching filmmaking like a UNHCR mission: There is no red carpet in Libya or Sudan. She still packs her own flashlights, notebooks, and waterproof gear. She made Blood and Honey with $13 million and a lot of humility. She approached it the way she does her job for UNHCR, like a student. “When I go on a field mission, I get multiple briefings, including from the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations],” she said. “And I took a course on international law. So I did the same thing I did with missions. I studied.” For the film, she “read a lot of books about the war. I talked to a lot of people, I watched, I listened. I just wanted to tell the real story.” She repeated what she has said several times: “I wanted to be respectful of people.” If she did not know something, “I asked.”
About her kids: During dinner, she talked with love and passion of her family, how she is educating them in their own languages and cultures, how she loves to fly around the world but how hard it is to be separated from them when she is away. She talked of how someone “who never was a babysitter” knew how to take care of Maddox as a 27-year-old single mother. “I didn’t know whether to give one bottle or 30 bottles,” she says, laughing, of her son’s infant days. “I called my mother.”
Angelina on her mom: “Her goodness had a huge impact on me,” she said. “Sometimes I go into hotels now and bellboys ask me about her. My mother used to write them notes when their children were born or christened. She was just that sort of person—everyone loved her.”
