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Angelina Wants to Save the World
Live Talk: Sean Smith on Angelina |
Join NEWSWEEK's Sean Smith for a Live Talk on Thursday, June 21, at 2:00 , ET, about his interview with Angelina Jolie. |
It's difficult to spend time with Jolie and remain dubious. "When I first started doing this, I thought I could save everybody," she says. "I was sure that there had to be a simple solution. Now I'm still in the field as much as possible, but spending more time in Washington. You can fight forever to open a tiny shop or vocational training center—and that's fantastic—but if the trade laws stay as they are, it's not really going to help." In April, Jolie and Pitt funded Global Action for Children, a Washington lobby that advocates funding for AIDS orphan programs and education for children in refugee camps. Earlier this month Jolie was invited to join the Council on Foreign Relations, the elite club for the American foreign-policy establishment. It's no room for lightweights. Her fellow members include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Jimmy Carter, Diane Sawyer and Bill Clinton. "She has evolved in her understanding of where she can make the biggest impact," says her philanthropic adviser, Trevor Neilson. "Her strategies have become extremely sophisticated, and it's clear that she is now a serious player on international issues."
Amid all that, it's easy to forget she's an actress with an Oscar ("Girl, Interrupted"). While Jolie's priorities have shifted in recent years, that evolution hasn't been reflected on screen. With the exception of the little-seen drama "Beyond Borders," Jolie has continued to act in fantasy roles that rely on her sexual allure, such as "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," "Original Sin," "Alexander" and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." These films have helped fund her advocacy work, but they haven't moved the needle on her career. "A Mighty Heart," which opens June 22, does. Shot for less than $20 million by British director Michael Winterbottom ("The Road to Guantánamo") in a raw, documentary style that has become his trademark, "Heart" is a soul-rending depiction of Mariane's struggle to find her husband, and her refusal to let his killers define his life. It is a movie without melodrama or movie-star lighting, and it allowed Jolie to deliver the most delicate, powerful and human-scale performance of her career. This is no fantasy role; this is a real woman. "It's probably the most difficult character I've ever played," Jolie says. "The emotion is so raw and so constant. Mariane was calm, focused, organized, but I would have been hysterical, driving the streets of Karachi like a crazy person."
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Driving the streets of Mumbai isn't easy, either, but for different reasons. Jolie is tucked into the back seat of a silver SUV, traveling home to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, across town from the hotel where she and the "Heart" crew were shooting. There's still no word on her bodyguards, and the incident weighs on her. "It just feels like we're drowning in a lot of confusion about each other," she says. "There's so much anger, and then you look around the streets here and there's so much imbalance and sadness. The focus is off." In this city of 18 million—almost double the population of Los Angeles—a reported 43 percent live in shantytowns and slums. Women plead for rupees on every block near the hotels. At stoplights, boys bang on taxi windows, selling trinkets or begging for rice. "I've never been around such extreme wealth next to such extreme poverty, and so much of it," she says. "It's hard to understand how it has gotten so bad." As we wait in traffic, a boy knocks on the window. He's selling books. She hands him a few protein bars. "Did you see what book he was selling?" she asks, as the SUV crawls forward. "Thomas Friedman's 'The World Is Flat'." She waits for the irony to register. "The first chapter is about outsourcing in India."
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