“I am delighted that Angelina Jolie is playing my role in the adaptation of my
book… I deeply admire her work and what she is committed to.”
MARIANE PEARL
Jolie’s transformation added a layer of authenticity, and put American actor Gary Wilmes in the right mood on his first day as reporter Steve LeVine. “I hadn’t met Angelina yet, so I walked into Asra’s house for the first time as Steve did in real life,” he recalled. “I had never seen her without the wig, and felt much more that I was with Mariane than with Angelina.”
Before coming to India, the production visited the south of France for scenes including Danny and Mariane’s wedding, at Chateau de Valmousse in Lambesc. Futterman had already filmed in Pakistan, but the wedding day was Jolie’s first on set.
“The way Michael shoots, I had no rehearsal,” said Jolie. “I was in my room getting ready and they said, ‘Okay, come down the stairs.’ So that was it. I walked into the wedding and we said our vows. I had looked at Danny’s and Mariane’s wedding footage just before, and it made me terribly sad. It was such a happy moment for her, so beautiful. They loved each other so much, those two, and you can see it in the wedding. It was hard not to cry.” The day after the wedding sequence, Jolie was filmed on the street in Marseilles, portraying Mariane after she has left Karachi to await her son’s birth. “She was walking down the street heavily pregnant, in a long gray skirt, carrying two shopping bags,” Walter recalled. “People walked past her, and bumped into her, and nobody recognized her. It was quite amazing.” Jolie understood the potential for risk, and for reward. “We talked about the risks before we started filming, the security concerns and what it would mean politically if we got it wrong. We could anger more people and make it worse,” she said. “But if by some small chance we get it right, maybe we can do a little something towards bringing people back together, or at least looking at each other in another light.”
Academy Award® and three-time Golden Globe winner Angelina Jolie was seen most recently in The Good Shepherd, co-starring Matt Damon and directed by Robert DeNiro. She will next be heard in director Robert Zemeckis’ fantasy adventure, Beowulf.
Jolie starred opposite Brad Pitt in the action-comedy-romance Mr. and Mrs. Smith for director Doug Liman in 2005. The previous year, she starred in Oliver Stone’s epic Alexander with Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Hopkins, as well as the action/adventure Sly Captain and the World of Tomorrow with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. She also lent her voice to the animated feature Sharl Tale, along with Will Smith, Robert DeNiro and Jack Black, and starred in the thriller, Talking Lives, with Ethan Hawke.
Jolie took on the lead role in Lara Croft: Tom Raider – The Cradle of Life in 2003, and in the drama Beyond Borders that year. She starred in the romantic comedy, Life or Something Like It in 2002. Her work in 2001 included director Simon West’s Tomb Raider, as well as Original Sin opposite Antonio Banderas for GIA writer/ director Michael Cristofer. In 2000, Jolie, Nicolas Cage and Robert Duvall starred in Gone in 60 Seconds for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
Jolie’s portrayal of a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted brought her an Academy Award®, her third Golden Globe Award, a Broadcast Film Critics Award and Best Supporting Actress Awards from ShoWest and the Screen Actors Guild.
Prior to that, Jolie played a rookie police officer opposite Denzel Washington’s veteran detective in the thriller, The Bone Collector, directed by Phillip Noyce. She also costarred in Mike Newell’s Pushing Tin with Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack. Jolie won the National Board of Review’s award for Breakthrough Performance for Paying by Heart, a character-driven drama directed by Willard Carroll and starring Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, and Ellen Burstyn.
With the HBO film GIA, Jolie won critical praise as well as a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of the supermodel who died of AIDS. She was previously nominated for an Emmy for her work opposite Gary Sinise in director John Frankenheimer’s George Wallace, a period epic about the controversial Alabama governor. The film brought Jolie her first Golden Globe Award and a Cable Ace nomination for her portrayal of Wallace’s second wife, Cornelia.
A member of the MET Theatre Ensemble Workshop, Jolie trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and has also studied with Jan Tarrant in New York and Silvana Gallardo in Los Angeles.
On August 27, 2001, Jolie was named Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), accepting the responsibility of meeting with and advocating for the protection of refugees on five continents.