THE ARTS/SHOW BUSINESS
JANUARY 24, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 3Rebel Without a Pause
Volatile, outspoken, aggressive--Angelina Jolie is Hollywood's favorite
wild child onscreen and off
BY JEFFREY RESSNER/LOS ANGELES
Wearing black leather and high-heeled boots, Angelina Jolie walks across
her Beverly Hills hotel room toward me, holding a serrated knife in her
hand. The alluring co-star of Girl, Interrupted has a lurid fascination
with sharp metal objects--exotic daggers, tattoo needles, the works. She
has even confessed to cutting her own skin in the past. But tonight
she's in a more benign mood, so Jolie slinks past me and proceeds to
carve up a steak delivered from room service.
The girl could use an interruption of protein. She's pretty slim,
despite the half-eaten Toblerone scattered around the room. Her skin
seems pasty, her face is gaunt and barely made up, and her famously
full, pouty lips appear in need of Blistex. Still, she exudes a misty,
undefinable star quality: there's something edgy yet enigmatic in both
her appearance and her manner. Jolie's real-life over-the-top intensity
and f__-it-all attitude are nearly as unsettling as her screen
performances, like the self-destructive fashion model in HBO's 1998
movie Gia and the dangerously seductive mental patient paired with
Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted. At 24, she behaves like an awkward
teenager trapped in a centerfold's body.
That contradiction is not lost on Hollywood. "Porcelain isn't fine
enough to describe how fragile she is," says director Philip Noyce, who
nevertheless cast her as a feisty policewoman opposite Denzel Washington
in last fall's hit thriller The Bone Collector. "She's not burned out
with the joy of performing. She's in her element because she can set
parameters for a character, whereas I suspect she doesn't know her own
boundaries emotionally and physically. I suspect she's happiest when
she's not being Angelina Jolie."
She was born Angelina Jolie Voight, daughter of Oscar-winner Jon Voight
and actress Marcheline Bertrand. Dad left not long after she was born.
(The two are now on good, if occasionally strained, terms.) Raised by
her single mother, Jolie struck out on her own at 16 and seems to revel
in her reputation as a wild child. She talks openly about her drug
experiences, about having had bisexual relationships and about how she
gets her best kicks from kink. With her famous lips pushed into a wicked
smile, she describes how she dragged an agent from the Creative Artists
Agency on a tour of New York City's bondage clubs. "S&M focuses you on
survival," she explains. "It's a weird cleansing of self."
But her bravado is backed up by substance. "Angie is rebellious,
volatile and really smart," says director James Mangold, who clashed
with her during the shooting of Girl, Interrupted. "Playing this role
put her in the mode of questioning authority. But if someone delivers
the goods like she did, then I'm happy to struggle with the
personality." Jolie concedes she shares her character's outspoken
nature: "Acting is not pretending or lying. It's finding a side of
yourself that's like the character and ignoring your other sides. And
there's a side of me that wonders what's wrong with being completely
honest. I get angry when I see people thinking they're better than
others. So, yeah, she's a lot like me in a certain way."
At a time when being controversial for most young actresses means
wearing Galliano instead of Prada, Jolie is a shot of adrenaline, and
Hollywood is growing addicted. She has been nominated for a Golden Globe
for her Girl, Interrupted performance, has just finished shooting a film
with Nicolas Cage and is scheduled to begin another with Antonio
Banderas next month.
"She's a female James Dean for our time," says Columbia Pictures
chairwoman Amy Pascal, whose studio backed Girl, Interrupted. "I'd make
any movie with her in it. I begged her to do the film version of
Charlie's Angels. But she's no angel."
And Dean may not be the best role model for her either: he died in an
auto crash when he was 24. "I'll probably live to be a ripe old age,"
Jolie says, laughing, when asked about her mortality. Later, to
underscore her good intentions, she describes how she welcomed in the
New Year. "I had a great time," she deadpans. "I was asleep." END
COPYRIGHT © 2000 TIME INC.
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