Celebrity Interview: Angelina Jolie Talks SALT

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Category: Celebrity News, Interviews, Pictures

Published on Sunday, 05 February 2012 20:50

Written by Janet Walker

SALT, a Sony Entertainment/Columbia Pictures film and Angelina Jolie, Phillip Noyce and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura are headed for a savory summer experience as SALT adds flavor to the box office with solid standings after the opening weekend receipts.

The partnership between Ms. Jolie and Director Phillip Noyce was well known before SALT and now with the audience clearly craving a second appetizing installment of Angelina Jolie as kick-ass CIA operative on the run, Evelyn Salt, the sequel can only promise a packed power punch.

With the collaborating team of Angelina Jolie, Phillip Noyce and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura the screenplay for the sequel to SALT will certainly be filled with faster action and will no doubt be a high tech contemporary thrill rill through the inner sanctums of the Pentagon and Washington, DC as Evelyn Salt works through the five-sided maze with a driving force to clear her name. 

The following roundtable interviews were conducted at The Ritz-Carlton, Georgetown, prior to the SALT’s weekend opening. Ms. Jolie was the third to the table. She was pleasant, forthcoming, informative and willing to talk, in depth, on the film, family and career. 

She emphatically denied the recent retirement rumor spawned by the August Vanity Fair cover, never spoke on Brad, her relationship, their lives together or any juicy morsels that may drive site traffic or sell magazines.

The photos of the two for the SALT premiere should dispel any rumors and as it is Hollywood, where fairy tales do come true and things are never the way they seem, we can only hope, for the sake of site traffic and magazines sales, that some juicy morsel may appear on the horizon. 

We had, collectively, fifteen minutes and the following are the exchange between myself and Ms. Jolie.

Janet Walker: Do you have a most memorable moment working on this film? I asked this question at every roundtable so far and they’ve all indicated they had these moments where it became there was a very poignant moment for them in the script process and I was wondering if you had one also?

Angelina Jolie: Um, I don’t know if it was that kind of movie for me. I think maybe watching the children. I think that maybe for me, they had to sit me down and they showed me all this footage of children in institutionalized settings doing all these things and as a little me which kind of looked a bit like Shiloh to me and she was almost in it for a moment. I guess it told me so much about my character but it also made me think of those kids. My character is orphaned. To see the little baby in the classroom by itself obviously I’m drawn to that moment.

JW: Last night at the Panel, the CIA Consultant talked about how she worked with you specifically on the Walk-In and how it was very important and she said you sat with her for some time picking her brain on that and can you tell me what you were trying to gather from her for that particular scene?

AJ: Well, for the Walk-In as far as the details, I don’t remember the specifics things such as how she behaved or what was appropriate or is this technically right, that kind of stuff. It was more, for me, this understanding of the loneliness of someone who’s not allowed to talk to their family about anything and just studying her which she probably didn’t realize I was studying her. I was asking her questions and watching her mannerism and just her behavior and just her. She is so the opposite of this tough and I’m feeling am I tough enough and she doesn’t fit that package, the obvious tough either and yet she is the real thing. So, it gave me comfort to know that I could also be lady and a woman and there was the reality to that as well and that I didn’t have to go tough and not try to mimic some idea but to actually study this lovely lady who had actually done this.

JW: You mentioned you physical training. You mentioned you had, it sounded like some Martial Arts training, is that stage combat or film combat training or did they put you through the actual rigors of boot camp style physical fitness?

AJ: You know, I told them I just don’t have time to train.  A lot of this for me was just getting back in to working out. I had babies and It just actually getting my boots back on and punching again. And trying so we really crammed it in pretty fast. So a lot of learning while doing. They did try to train me in different styles. We started kind of fancy with some tai and wide kicks and then we realized it had to be go more street fighting. It had to be more hands in somebody’s face and grapple and kick and punch. The quickest way to take somebody down; not the most interesting and prettiest way.

SALT opens July 23, 2010. See it.