Angelina Jolie is in promotional mode for Alice Winocour’s Couture. These days, Jolie’s promotional mode includes “a couple of premieres, a handful of screenings and not many interviews.” She’s from a different generation than most celebrities today, so she gets away with that. One might even say she’s one of the few “movie stars” around right now. Angelina agreed to a Zoom interview with Variety for her promotion, and of course these quotes are making news. Some highlights:

Whether Angelina considers herself punk. “I think I’m more punk now. Yes, it has an energy, but it’s also kind of the counter movement to a lot of what’s happening. So even sometimes my privacy or not completely being sucked into a lot of things or movements — sometimes the doing less, or being private, when the world is the way it is right now, that is an opposite.”

Her fighting spirit: “I think my fighting spirit is finally back. I lost it for a bit. I got kind of taken down a little bit and it’s coming back in large part thanks to my children, who are now older, and encouraging it. My kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me traveling the world, they want me to get out and do things. They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot. I think they’re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn’t felt as free to do.”

Before filing for divorce, she considered giving up acting: “I had kind of quit acting before my divorce. I was focusing on directing, and I thought I’d be doing my international work. But then suddenly the only way to be home more and for short periods of time being away or to make a good amount of money, was to go back to acting. I was only taking things that were short or close by or I could take [my children].”

The scenes in ‘Couture’ where she’s dealing with her character’s cancer diagnosis: “It’s very sobering in realizing – like the [doctor] says in the film — we’re all going to die, we’re all not here forever. I think having lost my mom young and never met my grandmother, I have never lived feeling like I’m going to have a long life. I’m already past the age when my mother was diagnosed. I may struggle from almost feeling like I can’t live in the moment because I feel like I have to push and rush because time’s running out… I raise my kids almost preparing them for my absence and not as much preparing to be a grandmother. That’s what happens when you consider death as a reality.”

[From Variety]

This broke my heart: “I raise my kids almost preparing them for my absence and not as much preparing to be a grandmother…” She’s been like this even before she adopted Maddox, it always felt like she would live hard and die young. I think motherhood & her mom getting sick really brought her down to earth and made her feel mortal. And I think Angelina coming back to acting was a real silver lining of everything the past decade. Yes, she was doing it for the paychecks, but there’s no shame in that, and it’s exciting to see her have this sort of career resurgence in her late 40s and early 50s. Anyway, Angelina is back! Her fighting spirit is back too!

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.