“You can’t debate who he is”: the controversial director who pushed Angelina Jolie to the limit
After her breakout role in Gia, which was shortly followed by the explosive success of Girl, Interrupted in 1999, Angelina Jolie soon won her first Academy Award and soared to success, with a stream of leading roles in Changeling, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and an upcoming collaboration with Pablo Larrain on Maria, a biopic about the life of opera singer, Maria Callas.
Despite a number of demanding roles and difficult working relationships, when asked to describe her most challenging collaborative experience, Jolie recalled her work with Oliver Stone on the 2004 film Alexander.
Alexander chronicles the life of the King of Macedonia and his battles against the Persian empire, with Colin Farrell in the lead role alongside Jolie. Despite a stacked cast, the film was not held in high regard by critics, with some criticising the movie’s pacing and performances. However, people largely agreed that the scope of the film was ambitious, aiming for a sweeping epic but perhaps middling in mediocre waters.
Given the historical scope and scale of the project, you can see why this would be a challenging role, with lengthy action sequences and a sprawling narrative. When Jolie was asked about the process of working with Stone, who is best known for Snowden and Natural Born Killers, she described his tenacious and relentless work ethic, saying, “I think that you can agree with or disagree with Oliver or where he’s coming from, but you can’t kind of debate who he is. He is who he is and he’s coming very straightforward with everything. So I appreciated that. He didn’t allow anyone to be safe. If anything, he demands a certain kind of commitment and bravery and doesn’t allow for anyone to kind of get too relaxed. He pushes things so that they’re more. So for that, he was really great”.
Given the subject matter of his films, often choosing stories centred around war, loss and death, you can see why he might adopt this approach to working with actors. In many cases, he pushed his actors towards the method approach, wanting them to become the characters they were playing and fully live in the story world.
Jolie speculated that this was because he had his own difficult life experiences and history, saying, “Agree with him or not agree with him, he does know life more than most people. He has lived very fully in his life. So when he does films that deal with war and loss and love and pain and relationships or whatever it is, he’s drawing from a very deep well”.
Jolie describes the level of commitment and intensity that Stone demanded from her, reluctant to let his actors take breaks or act as themselves while on set, becoming annoyed when people spoke in their regular accents or deviated from their character in any way. Jolie expanded on this, saying, “He wanted us all to live as our characters, and he’d get upset if I lost my accent when we were out to dinner. He wanted to see everyone become who they were”.
While every director has their own way of working, Stone’s approach is somewhat controversial, and I’m sure many actors would prefer more freedom in their method and approach when collaborating with other creatives. However, at the end of the day, it adds another wing to Jolie’s bow and becomes another story to tell.
