Jolie's most important role, not in movies

Ann Curry • Profile

It's this summer's blockbuster release, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Angelina Jolie plays a super spy, an undercover assassin sent to eliminate bad guys.

Ann Curry: “I want to know about this stunt in which it appears in the movie that you jump out of a 40 story window -- wearing, by the way, a dominatrix outfit.”

Angelina Jolie: “Of course. So I happened to get this stunt that suited me. But yeah, I was a little unsure about something the first time I went down and my coat flew off and I thought, oh, I have no pants on. I have no pants on and there's just a crowd of people on the floor.”

Curry: “Do you mean no underpants on or no pants on?”

Jolie: “Yeah. Everything is rubber… You don't feel like you're covered… Everything just doesn't feel right.”

What did feel right Jolie says was working with Brad Pitt for the first time.

Curry: “The chemistry between the two of you, acting or natural?”

Jolie: “Natural. Yeah.”

Curry: “Why do you think you worked together so well? Because I'm telling you, I'm watching the movie, it just seems you're comfortable with each other in your roles.”

Jolie: “We did work together surprisingly well, more than I thought we would, because I didn't know before we met. If we would actually work together really well and we had a great time.”

Jolie's character, Jane Smith discovers her husband John, is also secretly an assassin, working for another agency. When they are assigned to kill each other, marriage turns deadly.

Curry: “There seems to be this deliberate attempt on your part to not be—“

Jolie: “The girl?”

Curry: “Yeah. Yeah. The skirt, you know.”

Jolie: “Yes. Yeah. You know I guess because I've done so many action movies I don't actually even-- and also I consider girls to be pretty damn tough.”

Curry: “You don't defer to Brad in this movie in the violent scenes.”

Jolie: “We were very competitive. And we both wanted, you know, well, if she gets to slide across the floor, then I want to break a window. And I said, well, if he gets to throw me across the table, then I better smash him into the—yeah, so it builds.”

To prepare for these scenes, Jolie and Pitt had to train extensively and soon a real trust and friendship developed between them. But some of the fight scenes created challenges, especially for Pitt.

Jolie: “He's got to be fighting like he is fighting a man, equal to his size and how do you find that balance because physically he should be able to take me on because I am so much smaller than him. He was uncomfortable about it. You know the idea that he's going to hit a woman. And for any man that's just-- how do you get past that? It's not a comic book movie. I'm not a villain. It's like we're also husband and wife and now we're going to beat each other up. And domestic violence being what it is, you know, how do you make that fine line and make it an action movie and entertainment. When that is something that should never be entertainment or funny.”

Curry: “Is there too much violence in this movie?”

Jolie: “I don't think so. But we went all out for it. We wanted it to be that. We wanted every time like a husband and wife says to each other, I could just kill you. We thought, you know, what if they really could? What would it look like? 

Jolie felt right at home with the guns and things blowing up around her, but says she needed Pitt's help for the comedy.

Jolie: “He is very funny which helped me be funny. He got me from being too serious and he would just make me laugh so he helped a lot.”

Curry: “You were expressing some fear, trepidation about doing comedy.”

Jolie: “Yeah.”

Curry: “What does that say about Angelina?”

Jolie: “I don't know. I mean, I guess we're just -- for a long time, I was always much more comfortable in darker roles, in pain or quieter person and it takes a lot for me to feel that I have something to contribute in a light way, but I wouldn't assume, yeah, I'm that fun friend that everybody feels at ease with, you know? And I would love to think I had more of that, but—“

Curry: “Is that something you want to be more of?”

Jolie: “Well, I think having a kid, you know what I mean, he's really made me funny. So I guess he fixed that for me.”

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