Angelina Jolie gets nervous, too. That’s the big takeaway from the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, which features both herself and her Unbroken star Jack O’Connell on the cover, in another warm embrace.
Inside these new pages, she’s stewing. Not only did Angelina have to claw her way into the director’s chair for Unbroken, but she drove Brad crazy in the process.
“I was on fire,” she says. “There was no stopping me. I was completely insane.”
Finding out Universal’s verdict right before Christmas, she continues:
““Poor Brad—you just couldn’t talk to me. … I started wrapping everything—even little things that went in the stocking. I couldn’t just sit there and wait for the phone. So I was like, ‘I’ll wrap this whistle! I’ll wrap this candy cane!'”
But, Angelina got the chance she wanted and was able to direct the powerful, “human” story of World War II POW & Olympian Louis Zamperini. Except, even then, she still wasn’t happy. On the first day of shooting, she feared the worst: that the film would be a disaster. Angelina’s two stars were starving – and at sea – while out of frame.
"If you saw that first shot and my reaction to it, you'd be absolutely sure that this was going to be one of the great disasters of filmmaking history … The only thing you could do was laugh at how insane this was all going to be. And then you just had to take a deep breath and figure out what to do next. … I didn't know what I was up against when I was first getting into it.”
In other words, she’s selling Unbroken as a story of her own personal triumph. Jack even calls her a “selfless” director. However, any reviews of the movie remain under a strict embargo until Nov. 30/Dec. 1, allowing the promotional blitz to continue for the film without interference from critics or possible dissenters.
This marks the fourth Angelina cover of the month, and her third with Jack. Of course, each move is part of her strategy: Vanity Fair outlines her ambitions outside of Hollywood and sheds a light on her family life, Variety builds her street cred amongst other filmmakers by namedropping the Coens and powerful executives, and DuJour serves an edgy editorial where Angelina reportedly claimed she was going to give up acting. Naturally, she instantly slammed that quote… to Entertainment Weekly.
Does a vulnerable, domestic and well-connected Angelina make her more palatable to the Oscar voter and the Minivan Majority? This movie, based on a true story, is already designed to pull at your heartstrings but by having somebody at the helm who manages their stress by being a hands-on mother makes it even more relatable… for now. If nothing else, it gives her the benefit of the doubt.
Let’s just wait and see how the Brange game shifts on Dec. 2 (right after the NY Film Critics Circle announces their awards list and on the same day the NBR names its best of the year), once critics are free to speak, a week before SAG and Golden Globe nominations.
