THE STAR QUIZZES
ANGELINA JOLIE
Copyright 2001 Tan Kit Hoong Source: www.thestar.com
[ February 2nd 2001 ]
British
newspaper The Star recently joined an army of
journalists aching for an exclusive interview
with Angelina Jolie on the set of her latest action
adventure movie Tomb Raider, and reported the
following while the Cambodian contigent completed
scenes in the religious Ankor Wat Temples...
She's
very open, very wicked,'' says an extremely fit
Angelina Jolie in her best British accent as she
talks about her character Lara Croft in the upcoming
action flick Tomb Raider. Jolie ... "I thought
it would be a challenge to learn all these new
skills and be this healthy." Since her character
is British, born and bred American Jolie has had
to do her lines in a faintly aristocratic British
accent, pronouncing the word "wicked'' as wicket.
She's doing a pretty good job of it too. A few
Asia Pacific journalists, including one from The
Star, were treated to a chat with Jolie recently
while she was on location in Cambodia's Angkor
Wat where she and the 150-strong crew of Tomb
Raider were filming scenes from the movie. The
planned 10-day shoot in the 800-year-old ruins
of Angkor Wat near the small Cambodian town of
Siem Reap is the last leg of the film's on-location
shooting, which has taken the crew from Britain
to Iceland (which doubles as Siberia in the movie).
Today,
in front of a small temple that the locals call
Ghost Gate, director Simon West is filming a scene
where Lara's nemesis Powell (played by Scottish
actor Ian Glen) is instructing a bunch of locals,
ordering them to pull down a huge ornate stone
door that is the door to a tomb. It turns out
that although the stone door looks indistinguishable
from the rest of the temple, it is actually fake;
a prop brought in pieces and assembled here by
production designer Kirk Petruccelli's capable
crew. Jolie, looking rested, is not filming today,
and she greets her co-stars before coming in to
join us in a quiet part of the jungle, away from
the loud megaphone-enhanced verbal directions
coming from the director. After a three-month
physical training regime prior to the start of
filming, Jolie indeed looked the part of the athletic
Indiana Jones-like female adventurer--slim, tanned
and dressed in a black sleeveless turtleneck and
shorts.
The training
was necessary not only to have her look the part,
but also because Jolie had to perform most of
her own stunts in the film, something that is
evident as she shows us her swollen ankle, the
result of a small accident as she was doing a
running jump on wet ground. "I thought it would
be a challenge to learn all these new skills and
be this healthy. "You know, if somebody gives
any of us a lot of money and says, 'We'll give
you a job, and we're going to train you with military
skills, bungee jumping, motorcycle rides, boxing
and go live in England and to travel the world,'
... I'd feel really fortunate,'' said the 25-year-old
Jolie. Angelina Jolie, in her guise as archeologist-adventurer
Lara Croft, did most of her own stunts. "I'm just
really happy that I could pull a lot of it off.''
A sentiment that director Simon West and producer
Lloyd Levine share, both proclaiming that Jolie
performed some stunts even better than some of
her stunt stand-ins, especially the action scene
requiring her to perform a "bungee ballet'', an
unusual sequence that required Jolie to be tied
to a harness connected to bungee cords while fighting
bad guys in her mansion.
"Running
on the walls was really hard because you had one
thing attached to your waist and you had to get
the momentum to run around. I was red, black and
blue on my waist for weeks. From the pain, I thought
I had new stomach muscles but it turned out to
be a big bruise,'' said Jolie. "The first time
I did the gymnastics, and did a flip, the braid
whipped around and whacked me in the eye and I
had to see an eye doctor. But then, a few weeks
into filming, suddenly, I was able to spin the
guns, shoot them, jump off something and figure
out how to get the braid in the right place!''
Apparently, being a woman with a different body
shape and physical make-up (as compared with a
man's) also holds some special challenges of its
own when it comes to stunts, as Jolie found out.
"You're
shooting and you're jumping and your holsters
fall off because your hips are in a different
place! It's fun to discover how a woman in an
action movie works ... it's just a different way,''
said Jolie, who also remarked that shooting guns
was difficult because she was left handed, resulting
in spent bullet shells flying out and depositing
themselves unceremoniously down her shirt front,
burning her in the process. Why, after an Academy
award-winning performance in Girl, Interrupted,
did Jolie decide to switch gears and go for an
all-out action flick based on a computer game?
"Well, at first I didn't want to. At first I thought
it was a pretty bad idea. I think everything that
probably a lot of people might expect this movie
to be is what I thought it would be. "And then
I met director Simon West and he talked to me
about how he saw her and what he didn't want to
do and how he saw her as a warrior and a fighter.
He talked about filming in Cambodia and how we
were the first film crew here in such a long time
and I realised it was, selfishly, going to be
a growing (project).
"Lara
is also a character, I think, that's going to
be a really great, positive role model in all
the best ways, not just in a moral way. I think
there's not enough ... fire ... in people these
days ... and Lara's certainly got a 'don't touch
me' thing going on for her with experience that
was going to enhance my life.'' Jolie laughs.
Tomb Raider is also meaningful to Jolie in another
way--her real life father, noted actor Jon Voight,
is also playing the part of Lara Croft's father.
"It was amazing how long it took us to realise
that he should play the part, because it's so
much like our real relationship that it was kind
of hard to accept that we'd do it because it's
so personal,'' says Jolie. "Lara is still trying
to figure out who he was and who he is and they
spend a lot of time apart and in that way, it's
very much like me and my father.' On the subject
of love, Jolie also talked about being away from
her husband Billy Bob Thornton, remarking that
the different time zones make it hard for the
two to get each other on the phone. "Right now,
he's hating the distance between us but come Christmas,
he'd better brace himself,'' says Jolie, who now
sports a tattoo with the words "Billy Bob'' on
her shoulder. After Cambodia, the cast and crew
will head back to England's Pinewood Studios (the
famous 007 soundstage) to finish the interior
shots.
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