The future isn't clear for actress Angelina Jolie, who's most famous right now for being Jon Voight's daughter. The movie she made with David Duchovny, Playing God, was a disappointment, but many in Hollywood, especially those who've seen her in HBO's Gia, see good things to come.
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I know something about most of the people I interview long before I read the background material on them. Not so with Angelina Jolie. If David Duchovny hadn't told me how great she was to work with on Playing God, I'd never have heard of her. So if right now you're going, Angelina who?, I don't blame you. She played a computer freak in Hackers, but nobody saw that one. Even fewer saw her in the teen flick Foxfire. She starred in TNT's George Wallace opposite Gary Sinise, but... did you see it? Only the hardest-core Duchovny fans went to Playing God. And there was no way to know that the uncredited babe in the Rolling Stones video for "Anybody Seen My Baby?" was Jolie. All of which makes it perfectly understandable that even people who know the name Angelina Jolie still think of her mainly as Jon Voight's daughter.
So why talk to Jolie for the Young Hollywood issue? Because she's kind of a special case among the group of young actors who are more successful than most people ever get, yet haven't broken through to real stardom. First, there's her appearance. She's uniquely, exotically beautiful. She's, got the body teenage boys dream about--strong, small, but with big breasts. She's got a face with features that seem too amazing to fit together--eyelids as large as the Sahara, a pert little nose, lips like the ones Goldie Hawn was trying to buy in The First Wives Club (Jolie's are natural).
But apart from looks, Jolie seems to have life experience smoldering in her eyes, more than her 22 years would explain. One Industry person commented about her, "There's an old soul in there, and a force that's going to defy nature." And when I watched her as the out-of-control model in HBO's Gia, which aired in January, I saw that, too. She brings an edge and intensity to the screen that knocks the hell out of what most waify young Hollywood actresses her age can do. And she also has a womanliness that stands out from the wave of girlishness that's rolled over Hollywood for the last few years.
Jolie's apartment is located in one of New York's oldest buildings. The hallways are so gothic and creepy I figure Rosemary's baby must live here. As I near Jolie's door, I see a gigantic box with the words DANGER! ASBESTOS! written on the side. As I'm staring at it in astonishment, Jolie opens the door, reaches an arm out and snatches me into the apartment before slamming the door shut. "What the hell is that?" she asks, as if I'm the building superintendent. "They put it there this morning and I'm not sure if it's safe for me to stay here."
I'm speechless, not because of Jolie's behavior, but because of her head--she is nearly bald.
"What do you think?" she asks, forgetting about the asbestos and rubbing her hand across the one-eighth inch of stubble on her head.
"It's fantastic," I tell her honestly. "There aren't too many women who could get away with it."
"At the end of Gia, my character dies of AIDS. And they were wondering how to show how wasted she was. One night I realized that the only way to do it was to just shave all my hair off. I think everyone thought it was going to freak me out, but the truth is, every woman hates her hair, and now I don't have that to worry about! It made me feel really fierce."
Jolie's apartment is spacious, but something about the living room decor--two black leather couches, a few wooden tables, a piano in the corner--shouts, I'm-new-at-this-grown-up-thing. Jolie sits on one of the couches, pats the spot next to her, and beckons me to sit down.
"Nice," I say, waving my hand at the blank walls.
"I know," she says with a laugh. "I just got here a few months ago, and I like things simple, but I can see from your look that you think this is a bit minimal."
"I just wonder about someone who doesn't put any pictures on the walls," I say, settling into the couch. "So, let's talk movies. I did a story on David Duchovny last year right after he did Playing God with you, and he told me how great he thought you were. The film was certainly disappointing, though."
Jolie nods, not about to dispute the facts.
"But I remember that when I read the script," I continue, "there was a great sex scene between you and Duchovny that was sorely missing in the film."
"It got really confusing. I think what happened was my character and Tim Hutton's character had a real sexuality on the page. There were scenes to show how they had come to form this relationship, and how it worked for them. But then she meets David's character and she falls for him, too. So there was this scene they had, where he's coming off junk and she's just been shot in the breast, and they make love."
"Ouch."
"Exactly. I knew that people say that junkies want to have sex when they're withdrawing, so that wasn't really the issue. But how the hell would this woman be in this position, so to speak? All I could think was that this woman would not want to be fucking at this particular time. We did film the scene, and it was so funny. My breasts were purple and I couldn't use my right arm, and David is working on being a junkie, and we're trying to have sex. He's spasming and I'm writhing in pain. I'm on one arm trying to flip over, and he's got to be in a certain position.... Let me tell you, there was absolutely nothing sexy about this at all. I was glad they cut it out of Playing God."
I'm not going to argue with Jolie, but I'd like to see this sex scene. And even if it didn't help Playing God, it couldn't hurt it. Gia, on the other hand, is full of sex scenes, but with the same sex. Some critics have said she was so good at it that maybe she wasn't acting.
"I was surprised by how comfortable you looked during your lesbian love scenes in Gia," I say. "Most actresses look like they're squirming inside when they do that stuff."
"I wasn't uncomfortable," says Jolie with a laugh. "It's just not one of the things that makes me feel awkward. I also had a scene with a woman in Foxfire, but when the reviews came out, basically all they said was: 'Angelina Jolie has great tits.'"
"In Gia you show more than that, including your tattoos," I say.
"Well, not all of them," she says and then stands up right in front of me, takes down her pants, pulls her undies aside and shows me the tattoo you're not likely to see unless Jolie decides to do some hard-core porn. We both start to laugh.
"Is that disgusting?" Jolie asks, zipping up her pants. "Should I have not shown that to you?"
"It's not too often that someone pulls their panties down for me," I say, deciding it's time to change the subject. "You know, I've watched all your movies, and I have to say, you are completely unrecognizable from one role to the next."
Jolie thinks it over. "I think of myself as a character actress," she says.
"Well," I tell her, "Hollywood can't look at a woman as gorgeous as you and not see her as a leading lady. They just wouldn't know what to do with you."
"That's why I'm here in New York," says Jolie. "I came because I wanted to go back to school. After Gia, I realized that I wasn't likely to soon find a role that could compare to that. Then the Stones asked me if I wanted to do their video, and it was great, because I had just shaved my head for the dying scenes in Gia, and I've never felt so not sexy. But it was so cool to be thought of as a Stones girl." Jolie has a dreamy look on her face, and seems to have forgotten the point of her story.
"So, school..." I say, feeling like her teacher.
"Oh, yeah. I think if you act in enough movies where other people always choose the moment, you start to think that sometimes they've chosen all the wrong moments. Why are we on the long shot when that really important moment was happening inside me? So I'm going to NYU, taking techniques and technologies of film, film production and screenwriting. It's been fun. My mom walked me to school the first day and she was laughing, because I had always been terrible at school, and here I was with my backpack. But I think I'll be a better actress because of this. I didn't want to get caught in the wave of my career and then just get dumped off somewhere else. I want a little control."
"Who doesn't?" I ask.
"Whenever I read about how an actor wants more control, I just roll my eyes and think, 'sure.' But going back to school can't hurt me, and I always wanted to live in New York City."
"Do you have a lot of friends here?"
"None," she says in a small voice.
"They're all back in L.A.?"
"No, I don't have any there, either."
"How is that possible?" I ask her. "I've only been here for half an hour, and already I feel like we're friends."
"I never really made any good friends in one place because I've been on movie sets for years and those people become your family. Sometimes that's great, because you get all these terrific people around you, and sometimes it's not. My best experience was on Wallace. Gary Sinise made all of us feel so great. He made that set into the most supportive family, the best group of people. That was a risky role for me, and yet I never felt that way because Gary was such a terrific friend and coworker. I can't say enough nice things about him. [But] I think as actors, we go through groups of friends. We commit to the moment so much in our lives and in our work that we're friends with who we're working with at the moment. Maybe I just don't know how to carry them into the next stage of my life."
Jolie could be talking about her husband--she's been married for a year to Jonny Lee Miller, her costar in Hackers. He's still back in L.A. "We both needed time to grow up" is all Jolie cares to say on the subject, but she shows me some wedding photos. She wore pants made out of rubber and a white shirt with her husband's name spelled out on the shirt in her own blood. It probably seemed like a great idea at the time.
All of a sudden, through the window, we hear a man yell, a car swerve and a police car start its siren.
"Isn't this great?" asks Jolie. "I never realized how romantic New York is, because sometimes it's so lonely. But there's this guy who plays the saxophone outside my window at night. I sit in my living room in the middle of the night drinking tea and reading, and then look out the window--there's the moon and the saxophone, and it is just so incredibly sad. I feel like I'm toughening up and I'm waking up a little to different things."
"The other night, I made dinner for myself," continues Jolie. "I got dressed in a fancy dress, and I sat down and ate that dinner all alone. My instinct is to stand in front of the fridge and just shovel it in, but I wanted to feel like a grown-up, like this was the kind of thing I did all the time."
"Who the hell gets dressed up to eat alone?" I ask.
"You don't? But if I'm going to do this New York thing, then I have to start feeling good here. And part of that is to put on heels and stockings, and be happy to be by myself. When I lived in L.A., I used to wake up every day and just jump in my car and drive around for a couple of hours. I wouldn't stop anywhere, I wouldn't get out of the car--I'd just drive. I got into tons of car accidents. I was a menace."
"Can I see what's in your refrigerator?" I say.
"Really?" Jolie asks, confused. "Most journalists want to look at my books."
"Anyone can buy books that look cool," I point out. "But what's in your fridge says a lot about you."
She leads the way and opens the freezer. A solitary pint of Ben & Jerry's and a little bottle of Absolut vodka. The fridge contains a box of cereal, some PowerBars, two six packs of beer and assorted leftover candy.
"Ah," I say, "the lonely girl's refrigerator."
"No, it's OK. I am learning to do for myself. My whole life, I had my mom or my husband. But now, I get up in the morning and I have no one to rely on except myself. And I'm learning to trust myself. I have good instincts."
"Do you and your father talk about movie roles?" I ask.
"Yes and no. I love talking to him about work because he knows immediately what I mean. But we don't sit and dissect scripts together."
"In Wallace, your character tries to get her husband to have sex with her after he's become a cripple. Your father played a similar kind of scene in Coming Home."
"When I was doing Wallace, a guy was talking about that scene. He didn't know I was Jon's daughter. But trust me--the last thing I wanted in my mind when I was kissing Gary Sinise was the image of my father with his head between Jane Fonda's legs!"
Jolie pauses, then continues, "A few years ago, they had this anniversary edition of Midnight Cowboy. [Jon] took me with him, and that was weird, because although it's a great movie and all that, to me it was just more about seeing how my father felt at the time. In one scene he was running on the beach, and when I saw this I burst out crying, because all I could think was how much I love him and how that must have been such a happy day for him. The whole world was at his fingers and I could see his favorite expressions that, as he's gotten older and gotten more serious about the world, he uses less often. I thought, this is more the essence of somebody that I love and I hope he really still connects to, because I love this guy in this movie. My favorite movie of his is Conrack..."
"Conrack?" I laugh. You can guarantee this movie won't appear on anyone else's Best of Voight list. It came out in 1974 and was a sappy film about a smalltown teacher who makes a difference in a black school. It's the one film of Voight's where he plays a completely normal guy.
"Sure, you think it's funny, but Conrack was just so cool. He played a great teacher--stop laughing!"
"OK," I say, trying to stop Jolie. "So let me just recap here: you've moved to New York, you're trying to learn the mechanics and theory of how movies are made, and you want to be a real grown-up."
"Do you think that's too much to take on at one time?" Jolie asks without a trace of irony. "There are things I have to get done. It's not like time is running out, but..."
"Angelina, you're only 22 years old."
"But I feel like I have to grab it all right now. There's a lot to learn out there. I don't want to get too far behind."
I think she might be kidding, but there's an earnest look on her face. When I leave she gives me a kiss and pushes me out the door, into the giant box with the ASBESTOS! warning. Instead of thinking of my safety, I'm thinking that Jolie is probably slipping into her evening dress for a dinner for one.
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Martha Frankel interviewed Jon Bon Jovi for the February 98 issue of Movieline.