Straight from the heart

She’s one of the world’s most famous women: a movie star with a mission, the tattooed tough girl turned goodwill ambassador.  She’s a superstar, and these days a supermom.

Angelina Jolie: I’m so excited I get to be their mom, you know?

Ann Curry, NBC News: But they’re all under the age of six, Angelina.  And I know what that sounds like—

Jolie: Oh, it’s chaos.  They're at a hotel.  They’re ruining a villa as we speak. (LAUGHTER) They are. I’m sure I’ll find markers on the wall.

Ann Curry • Profile

Angelina and her partner Brad Pitt arrived at the Cannes Film Festival, along with their four children, for the opening of “A Mighty Heart,” the story of American journalist Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped in the early months after 9/11, then executed  by Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaida.

Angelina plays Pearl’s widow, Mariane. Brad is a producer.

Curry: To play her was not easy.  To play her at this time of her life was not easy.

Jolie: No.  I’ve played real people before, but I never knew them.  You’d think that would be easier. I did. But the day before we started shooting, I had hardly slept and I was in a panic.

Earlier this week I sat down with Angelina in a villa in Cannes for a wide-ranging talk about her new movie—and the way that art and life can intersect. 

Curry: In the movie, Mariane is surrounded by paparazzi.  And it’s hard not to notice that this was something that you yourself have experienced and must know how to play how to deal with this kind of incredible attention.

Jolie: Well, it was very different because I’ve never gone through what she’s gone through, you know?  So as much as I know what a flashbulb is in a car, I don’t know what it’s like to have lost my husband and somebody do that to me.  So it’s very different.

We talk about her off-screen roles, including being a mother to an ever-expanding family. 

Curry: What’s the best part of being a mother of four?

Jolie: They are just my favorite people.  They are just so much fun.  And I get to watch who they’re becoming every day.

We also talked about loss. Angelina is grieving over the loss of her mother who died of cancer just last January.

Jolie: Dammit, you got me crying.(laughs)

Curry: I didn’t mean to make you cry.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.

Jolie: Yeah.

Curry: I’m sorry.

Jolie: No, no.  It’s all right.  It’s all right. You know, it’s a part of life.  So I’m at a strange place I suppose in my life. I think that what happens when you lose a parent, where you lose—you drop into a different kind of serious.  

We also talked to her— and her companion Brad Pitt— about their good work around the world. Together they have donated huge sums to those in need.

Brad Pitt: You can move the ball forward a little bit. And that is just getting your hands dirty.  Rolling up your sleeves a little bit and seeing where it takes you.

Curry (to Jolie): Recently, you and Brad gave a million dollars to an organization who wants to do something about AIDS orphans, like your daughter Sahara. And you’ve been lobbying the White House to approve giving $2.5 billion to this. Why is this America’s problem?

Jolie: It’s everybody’s problem.  It is not America’s problem.  I’m not somebody to say, “Well, America’s the wealthiest and a powerful nation and, therefore, has a responsibility to.”  I don’t think that’s true.  I don’t think that’s the reason why.  I think that shouldn’t be our motivating, “You should because you have.”

Curry: What would be the reason?

Jolie: Because it’s the right thing to do.   

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