But then, the Oscar-winning actress clearly loves a challenge. “I do like making movies like this, and I loved making this one,” she smiles. “When they first called me about Salt, I had just had the twins and I was at home in my nightgown feeling very soft and maternal.

“I remember I was with them in my bedroom, you know as you do in the early weeks when you’ve just had a baby, and I flipped through the script and it was all about getting out there and attacking and being very physical and I did feel really funny, in my nightgown in my bedroom, thinking, ‘If I can do this, it would be a nice balance.’ You know, from being soft and Mommy and then going back to work and doing this hard, physical role. It seemed like a real challenge. And I like that.”

The origins of the project date back even further. Jolie recalls a meeting with Amy Pascal, cochairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, a few years back when among other projects they discussed the new James Bond movie Casino Royale.

“We had this lovely, playful talk about the fact that I would have preferred to have played Bond,” she laughs. “I think they were thinking that maybe I could play the girl in the movie but actually, I was pregnant at the time and I couldn’t have done it. And it wasn’t right for me—the people they cast in Casino Royale were perfect for it.

“But, I guess, the idea stuck with Amy because years later she called me and said, ‘I think I’ve found it….’” The “it” in question was Salt, a contemporary spy thriller originally written for a male actor. (That would be Tom Cruise.) Pascal reasoned—and Jolie agreed—that the script could skilfully be adapted to make the protagonist, a CIA agent accused of being a sleeper spy for the Russians, into a female lead.

Indeed, for Jolie the film was exactly what she was looking for and ticked all the boxes—strong characters played by an expert band of actors (including Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor) with dynamic action sequences that are very much a part of a compelling story directed by a filmmaker, Phillip Noyce, that she admires and had worked with successfully before on The Bone Collector.

“With Salt, the writers didn’t necessarily sit down and think, ‘What would a woman do in this situation?’ They just thought, ‘What would a CIA agent do?’ And I think that immediately made it one of the better roles I’ve read and something that was much more challenging to do.”

Often, women in spy films have been little more than beautiful adornments to the story. Not so with Salt. “Females in those films rely on being female but we wanted to ignore that. She’s just Salt. It’s not about being a female and she certainly doesn’t use her sexuality to get anything in the film,” says Jolie.

“In fact, in many ways it’s the roughest I’ve looked at a certain stage because when you fight it gets ugly, and if somebody breaks your nose it’s not pretty.”

When Evelyn Salt, a veteran CIA operative, is accused of being a sleeper spy for a foreign power, she has to fight to prove her innocence. And the first priority is to evade capture and go on the run. She’s a woman alone designated as an enemy of the state and the colleagues she has worked with for years are now out to catch her.

For Jolie, playing an ambiguous character who might not be who she claims to be was a whole lot of fun. She loved the fact that the audience will be on the edge of their seats wondering if Salt is a loyal CIA agent or, in fact, she could really be a mole, deep under cover for the enemy.

“I think you go through the film, if we have done our job right, not being sure of who she is and when you think you are sure of who she is, maybe even that is different than you thought it was.

“I like that where you don’t quite know what’s going on. And hopefully we made it smart enough and respected the audience’s intelligence and tried to make it complicated. I think they will like it.”

Jolie, along with stunt coordinator Simon Crane and her stunt double Eunice Huthart—who have both collaborated successfully with the actress on previous films including Tomb Raider and Mr. and Mrs. Smith—developed a distinctive style of fighting and developed the spectacular stunts seen in the film.

“We talked a lot about the way she fights,” she says. “And the thing that was maybe the least obvious for a woman became the thing that we relied on which is that she’s mean. Not flashy, not gymnastic, not inventive—she’s just mean when it comes down to it.”

She embraced the considerable physical challenges that presented themselves during filming and, wherever possible, did the action scenes herself—including a hair-raising sequence where she jumps from a bridge on to a moving car and climbs out on to the ledge of a building 12 stories up.

“I get a kick out of it. I love that kind of thing. And the thing is that Simon and Eunice both know me so well so when they set a stunt, they have me in mind and they know what I can do.

“There are a few things, when you look closely at the film, that involve heights or something moving fast and those are two things that I’m very comfortable with. “And the people that know you know the things that you love doing and they come up with things like climbing outside of a building on a ledge really high up, or jumping off a bridge. They know that’s where I’m comfortable and they will adjust stunts to the things that I love instead of just randomly throwing anything at me.”

Her willingness to tackle as much as possible did mean that she picked up one rather nasty injury. Filming a sequence for the end of the movie, she was required to burst into a room under fire, roll across the floor and fire her own weapon.

“It was first thing in the morning and I thought, ‘This is a piece of cake,’” she recalls. “I jumped inside shooting and somehow I went right into this ledge that was about a foot off the floor and it knocked me right between the eyes and cut me open.”

After some on-set treatment, Jolie was taken to hospital for a checkup. “It was fine. I had a cut on my head and they covered it up with a patch. And I was back shooting stunts that day. And it’s funny because in the later scenes my nose is broken and I’m pretty cut up, so we didn’t even have to cover it up—it blended right in.”

Jolie met several real women CIA operatives and it gave her invaluable insight into women who, essentially, have to live secret lives and dare not reveal the true nature of the highly dangerous work they do.

“The two women I met were sweet-looking, smallish-framed, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, and looked like they would be running the little store in the High Street or maybe teaching in Ohio,” she says. “But once you started talking to them, you could see how these women navigated themselves through this incredibly demanding world and how dangerous it was. And they are tough, tough women.

“And one of the things they told me was that as women they had such difficulty dealing with relationships; they said the hardest thing is to be in a job where you can’t talk about anything that is happening with your husband.”

The film, she says, is grounded in that kind of detailed reality. And even the premise that a deeply buried sleeper could exist within the ranks of the CIA is not so far-fetched. Evelyn Salt is forced to go on the run to prove her innocence when a defector alleges that she’s a mole who will trigger “Day X”—the day when Russian sleeper spies are activated to begin a war against the United States.

Day X is still a controversial topic inside the CIA, says Jolie. Some firmly believe that the theory is real, while others dismiss it as a myth.

“But there are CIA agents that do believe that there are sleepers. And when you think about it, there have been in the past and it is a very strong tool to use if you want to infiltrate an organization. So you do wonder.” Jolie was delighted to be reunited with director Phillip Noyce, some 10 years after they made The Bone Collector together. They picked up right where they left off, she says.

“We had an immediate communication. Phillip is somebody who understands action but he is also somebody who understands drama and emotion and real people and subtleties and nuance and character. He is one of those rare directors who instinctively knows that balance very well. I was relieved when I knew Phillip was directing the film because I knew he could do it.”

Her costars, too, were a “joy” to work with, she says. “I think the world of both of them. You know, we could all have approached this as a summer movie and kind of relaxed but nobody did that. We took it as a serious endeavor and we really worked hard.”

There was, though, time for some fun. Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt are the extremely proud parents of six young children: Maddox, 8, Pax, 5, Zahara, 4, Shiloh, 3, and twins Vivienne and Knox, who turned two in July.

“Brad and I take turns to make films,” says Jolie. “So if I’m working, he’s not and vice versa. When I made Salt it was a very happy time for all of us. The older children would come on set and see some of the rigs and they just want to get on them—so they would get hooked up to things and fly across the stage.

“They did a lot of that when they came to visit. They would play with fake blood and get pretend cuts and bruises from the makeup department and they had a lot of fun. We all did.”

The daughter of French actress Marcheline Betrand and Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, throughout her career, Jolie, 34, has enjoyed switching genres from action—playing the popular computer-game heroine in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and its sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, an assassin in Mr. and Mrs. Smith—to more serious drama including Beyond Borders and, more recently, the highly acclaimed A Mighty Heart in which she played the widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl.

Her work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees started after first visiting Cambodia, where she partly filmed the first Tomb Raider. Since then, she has traveled to more than 30 countries, including many dangerous regions, highlighting the plight of refugees. She has also funded several humanitarian projects in Asia and Africa. She is also currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Source: Business Mirror

In Japan

Comic-Con 2010

Gallery Links:
- Events Salt Press Conference
- Events Salt Premiere

Gallery Links:
- Events Salt Photocall
- Events Salt Premiere

But you won’t hear any 140-character musings from the actress, 35. She’s locked her account; she has no followers and isn’t following anyone.

“Jolie had her people obtain the account for her so no one else could have that username,” a source tells UsMagazine.com. “There was actually someone else using @AngelinaJolie but Angelina requested the account suspended and took it over.”

The insider adds that the Salt star might become active on the microblogging site “later this year.”

So what would she write about?

“If she uses it, it will be for charity-related items or sharing links,” says the source.

Source: US Magazine

‘SHE’S A SPRINTER’

“She’s very fast, arms pumping, she’s got sprinter run,” Schreiber, 42, tells Canada’s Star daily.

In Salt, Angelina, 35, plays a CIA agent accused of being a Russian sleeper spy. In order to prove her innocence, Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, goes on the lam.

Liev’s job was to catch and arrest Angelina, but says he couldn’t keep up with her in the foot-chase scenes because she’s a sprinter underneath her frail frame.

She “very, very” tough to chase, says Schreiber.

“There’s an awful lot of running,” he recalls. “I didn’t expect it to be a very physical role for me, so I didn’t train much. Of course, I show up for the first week of shooting and I’m chasing her all through the (National) Mall in a suit and dress shoes. I never really realized how difficult that was. I suppose that to sprint for a hundred meters or so once in a suit it’s fine, but if you had to do it a 100 times, it gets tough.”

JOLIE FOLLOWED A HIGH-CARB DIET & DID FIGHT TRAINING

For those who have seen the film, the action and stunt scenes are loud and intense, with lots of running, jumping and fighting sequences that would test the stamina of an athlete.

But the super-skinny Angelina trained and followed a high-carb diet to prevent weight loss while keeping up her strength during the physically exhausting shoot, says her stunt instructor, Simon Crane.

“Angelina had to have 70% carbohydrates and 30% protein diet with an anaerobic training regime (as opposed to aerobic), so she can put muscle on without losing weight,” he say.

Jolie, who previously took up karate and weight-lifting when she played Lara Croft in the 2001 and 2003 blockbusters, also underwent training for Salt. “For her fight training, we got her learning a combination of Muay Thai and Krav Magha very early on,” says Crane. “We would then pick the moves she was best at and combine them into a sequence.”

Meanwhile, co-star Schreiber is no stranger to physical roles himself, having played Victor Creed, a.k.a. Sabretooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Jewish resistance fighter Zus Bielski in Defiance (2008) and a war hero in The Manchurian Candidate (2004).

‘THE STUFF ANGIE CAN DO PHYSICALLY IS REMARKABLE’

While Liev has no problem taking on mentally and physically challenging action roles, meeting Angelina made him nervous.

“I was very intimidated and kind of nervous [when we first met],” he recalls. “I get uncomfortable around famous people and beautiful women, and she was kind of a double threat. This was a big double-whammy for me and initially really uncomfortable.” Angelina_Jolie_did_her_own_stunts_in_Salt Salt premiere

But Schreiber immediately bonded with Angelina while discussing their kids.

“All the anxiety about her being very famous and a super-human celebrity kind of went away and I found this very nice, easy person that I could relate to,” he recalls.

Liev was also impressed that Jolie could do such physically tough action scenes despite her fragile-looking frame.

“I think that’s one of the guilty pleasures of being a guy: watching beautiful women pull off these action things,” he says. “The stuff that Angie can do, physically, is remarkable.”

The strapping 6’3″ Schreiber notes: “She’s a lot shorter than I thought she would be [Jolie is 5'8"], but I was pleased by that. I’m happy there was a flaw.”

He adds: “Having said that, I think Angelina is pretty talented and a remarkable human being, and a great mom. She’s definitely not like any other lady I know.”

Salt is in theaters now.

Source: Examiner

—Angelina Jolie on the rumors that she’s in the running to play Hollywood lust goddess Taylor in Mike Nichols’ flick based on the new book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century

Quelle tragédie! Especially because…

It sounds like Angie’s super into playing power goddess Cleopatra, for a film that’s in development about the legendary ruler, who was short and had a big schnoz.

“I would be honored,” Jolie told reporters earlier this week about the Cleopatra role. “I’m fascinated by her and the mystery…but we haven’t gotten a script yet, so we’ll see if something’s good enough and we’ll try and make it.”

OK, well, we think the casting choices are totally swapped here.

First off, our girl Snooki should play Cleo…remember? Come on, think outside the box for a change, Hollywood! And as for Liz Taylor, Angelina would be perfect for the role (well, she’d have been perfect circa six years ago, but she still works).

Angelina and Taylor both have the Hollywood glam looks, but it’s their similar personalities that would make this a casting choice made in Tinseltown heaven. They both wear those shameless man-eater badges so well, and yet their elegance and charitable endeavors often make you forget about those notch-mark qualifications. Plus, they’re both intoxicatingly beautiful and can give a ballsy sound bite when they need to.

And yes, even though Taylor played Cleo as well, even she thought it was kind of ridiculous casting at the time—not the least of which because the woman was, to quote E.T., “very homely.”

So, come on producers, do Angie—and us—a favor and switch those upcoming roles around, already!

Plus, Ange, Liz Taylor can get you access to the man you really want: Oscar. We know you’re dying to nab Best Actress eventually (hence the half-retirement stuff), and this kinda role could be your chance to do it. Just sayin’!

Source: E Online