JOLIE DISLIKES HER LATEST CHARACTER
Copyright 2002 www.itv.co.uk

[ April 25th 2002 ]

Actress Angelina Jolie has said she hates the character she plays in her latest film - a vain, self-absorbed television reporter. The 26-year-old Tomb Raider star, who plays hard-nosed journalist Lanie Kerrigan in Life Or Something Like It, said that for much of the film she couldn't stand her character.

"Who she is through the majority of the movie is the kind of person I find sad and I can't stand. Someone who's really self-centred and really focused on just superficial material things, it's just awful, it's a horrible thing," Jolie said. "Parts of the film I just hate myself because she's a person I don't recognise at all."

In the romantic comedy, which opens in the United States tomorrow and in the UK in September, Jolie's blonde bombshell character is an ambitious television personality who thinks of nothing but her career. But after interviewing a psychic homeless man who tells her that her life has no meaning and that she is going to die in a week, Kerrigan is sparked into action and sets about trying to change the pattern of her life.

Jolie, an ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who recently adopted an eight-month-old Cambodian baby with husband Billy Bob Thornton, says she can relate to this aspect of Kerrigan's life. "I believe in living every day to the fullest because you could only have a week. I believe in all that," she said.

Jolie has also spoken of her love for 46-year-old Thornton, whom she married two years ago, and how the past year has brought her peace. "It's not been about a career thing but about having a home, my husband being my best friend and knowing I will spend the rest of my life with my best friend and nothing else really matters," she said.

Jolie, who has been in Africa filming another film, Beyond Borders, still has to bring baby Maddox home to Hollywood. Red tape has meant the immigration process has yet to be completed, but Thornton has said the couple hoped the paperwork would be finished in a matter of weeks.