The two directors who taught Angelina Jolie the most: “Allowed air in the room for the actors to create”
In Hollywood, Angelina Jolie is a name that immediately invokes the guarantee that whatever role she plays will be immortalised in cinematic history, done with a level of perfection that can never be replicated. Can you imagine anyone else playing the raw and unpredictable Lisa in Girl, Interrupted—for which Jolie bagged an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’—or Fox, the ruthless assassin with a heart in Wanted? Neither can we. And in this, she has never refrained from fondly naming the people who made her the actor she is today.
Jolie wasn’t always this magnificent presence onscreen stealing the scene. The beginning of her career was spread across flops, with her getting nominated for the ‘Worst Actress’ Golden Raspberry Award numerous times and attracting criticism for her acting. Antonia Quirke of the London Evening Standard called out her “utterly deadpan” performance in Taking Lives, while many critics couldn’t get over how her performance was all over the place in Original Sin.
But Jolie improved and turned herself into a bankable actor—for which she credited directors Clint Eastwood and Michael Winterbottom in a chat with CBS News. She worked in Changeling and A Mighty Heart with the two renowned filmmakers, respectively, and completed the productions with many valuable lessons. While playing her Oscar-nominated role in Changeling, Jolie learned “a lot about working with people that you love, that you think are great people and making a family, working with nice people, good people”.
Eastwood, who is known for his efficiency and keeping a tight schedule for his productions, also taught Jolie “about the economy of a shoot and a budget and all of that, and trying to get through it”. The actor’s next idol was Winterbottom, who cast Jolie in A Mighty Heart as Marianne Pearl, desperately searching for her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, kidnapped (and then executed) in Pakistan. The experience of playing the emotion-heavy role was unique for the actor as the director “allowed air in the room for the actors to create something that was not pushed upon them”.
Eastwood’s Changeling brought us Jolie, who plays the role of a grief-stricken mother, with a compelling intensity that makes her a powerful presence throughout the film. Actors in her shoes often commit the error of overacting when met with such emotionally demanding roles, but not Jolie, whose striking performance shows the strength and heartbreak innate to a grieving mother. The role earned her a second Oscar nomination, global acclaim, and, of course, more prominent leading roles.
Though A Mighty Heart didn’t assume a similar path in terms of box office success, it is still considered one of Jolie’s finest roles to date, winning her appreciation for carrying its incredibly sensitive and heavy subject matter with grace. She won several nominations for the role, including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for ‘Best Actress’.
While the film didn’t register itself as a massive dollar magnet at the box office and did attract controversy over racial representation (since Marianne, in real life, was of Afro-Cuban and Dutch origin), the role—like many others before and after it—added to Jolie’s status as a serious dramatic actor possessing the ability to play compelling characters with a rare finesse and depth.
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