UP-CLOSE WITH ANGELINA

WOW!

Look at Angie’s lips. Those eyes. That skin. Gorgeous.

This is the issue that everyone is talking about – the one where Angie talks about her sex life with Brad.

Hot, hot, hot!

Full press release after the jump!

ANGELINA JOLIE TELLS ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY “THAT SOME PEOPLE SUPPORT ME AND SOME PEOPLE REALLY DON’T LIKE ME TELLS ME THAT I’M MAKING DECISIONS AND I’M STANDING STRONG FOR SOMETHING I BELIEVE IN.”

THE ACTRESS DISCUSSES HER CAREER, HER CHILDREN, AND MARRIAGE

NEW YORK – Angelina Jolie has two dual identities: the Mistress of the Dark (as in her fascinations with tattoos, knives, and blood), and the Minister of Light (her work promoting international peace). Her two starring film roles this year continue that dichotomy: On June 27 she appears as a morally-driven assassin in Wanted, and this fall she stars in Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Changeling, as a 1920s single mom whose eight-year-old son disappears. When asked what convinced her to do another action film, she says “I was in between Mighty Heart and Changeling, which were two very, very emotionally difficult films to do. And my mom had passed away in that year. And I’d had a baby. So everything in me was just feeling very fragile. And so, knowing myself, I thought, What I need to do most is get up and get focused and get aggressive and get out of myself a little bit. We discussed that at home – that that would be good for me. Then I read this and knew they were casting [James] McAvoy, and I thought, That sounds really unusual. I met Timur [Bekmembatov, the director] and I knew that he’d include a story. I know that sounds odd, but a lot of action movies rely so much on generic special effects or a story we’ve heard before.”

For some, it may be difficult to square this dark, gun-toting character with Jolie’s role as a UN Goodwill Ambassador, but she isn’t worried. “I am a strong believer that without justice there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway. I’m somebody who’s very curious about the international criminal court and supportive of following through on the arrest warrants in Darfur. I’m not somebody that just wants to hold up a white flag and say ‘Let’s all just get along.’ I think people that do horrible things should be held accountable,” she says. “I don’t think like in Wanted – which is an action movie – people should [just] be killed. I think there should be trials and justice. But the idea behind Wanted is not that she’s a bad-ass assassin that just likes to kill people. It’s that, if you ran into Hitler before he did everything, and you knew, should you shoot him? And I would. These assassins are getting lists: they find out who is going to slaughter other people ahead of time and they remove them. So that was the side of me that identified with her.”

Her other starring role, Changeling, is the first role she’s played where motherhood is central to the character. “I wasn’t old enough to play the mom [before]. And I don’t think I really knew what it was to be a mom until these last few years. Especially the mom of an older son. It’s one thing playing the mom of a new baby, but my relationship with Maddox was very much on my mind and I just couldn’t shake the thought of him through the whole film. He’s the one that I talk to the way I talk to the little boy in the movie. So I see the movie and Brad [Pitt] sees it and [we recognize] things in it – even just little things. The boy says, ‘Am I too heavy?’ Mad says that all the time. ‘Am I too heavy?’ ‘Oh, never! One day you’re going to carry me!’”

Working on the film with well-known Republican Clint Eastwood allowed many interesting conversations. “I think people assume I’m a Democrat. But I’m registered independent and I’m still undecided. So I’m looking at McCain as well as Obama. Clint can teach me about things domestically and I’m more aware of some things internationally. So it was less a debate and more things we found interesting,” she says.

Pitt even helps her to make decisions about which scripts would be good for her. “I’m terrible at reading scripts. I love to read and I hate reading scripts,” says Jolie. “Brad reads a lot because he’s also producing. We’re always joking about the fact that I just hate it. I have no patience. I can’t watch movies either. What usually will happen is I’ll talk to Geyer [Kosinksi, her manager] about what stage I’m at in my life and what type of woman or story I’m looking to tell. Like with Wanted, I call and say, ‘I really feel like I have to do something that’s physical right now.’ Right now I don’t want to work at all. I want to stay home, so the few things we’ve talked about are the amazing, once-in-your-lifetime things, like Atlas Shrugged. But other than that, I’m not looking.” When asked whether her and Pitt would consider doing Atlas Shrugged together, she says “We’ve talked about that. But we’ve also talked about, Would that be good for the film? It would have to really work for the audience and not hurt the story. It’s been 50 years of people trying to pull a movie together. If it comes together it’d be hard to say no to. The people who have the rights are itching to do it. They were itching to do it before, but [looks at her pregnant belly] I got myself in a state!”

In many ways, Jolie is considered a polarizing figure – people either worship her or they can’t stand her. “I’d like to think it’s because I’m not neither-here-nor-there in my life. I think anybody that makes a decision about where they stand is going to cause strong opinions about them. But I think that’s what you should be hoping for in life, so I take that as a very good sign,” she says. “That some people support me and some people really don’t like me tells me that I’m making decisions and I’m standing strong for something I believe in. I’m making choices in life. And that’s the right thing to do.”

Jolie’s past comments about knives and cutting have made it difficult for people to accept her more recent identity as a mother and activist. “The reason I talked about going through certain pains or even cutting myself is that I was already out the other side. I knew there were people that do that – and somehow are happy that somebody admitted they did and discussed how they got out of it,” she says. “I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things, I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.”

Jolie admits to enjoying a debate, getting into fights, and being drawn to extremes. “We joke about that at home a lot, because we walk in different worlds together, Brad and I,” she says. “We joke about the extremes of the things we’ll do.” Like what? “Well, certain things are private! But there’s a side of us that’s so mommy/daddy and then there’s a side of us that’s….very man and woman. I’ll leave it at that. We both like to ride motorcycles, we both like to fly planes, that’s the spirited side of us. Then the other side of us is very focused on silly mommy/daddy things. So I guess that’s extremes, but I just think of that as a balance.”

Jolie also discusses the best and worst things about being pregnant. “You just really can’t complain about anything as long as you know the babies are looking healthy,” she says. “The only thing that’s hard for me now is with twins and having four kids, there’s a lot of the doctor saying ‘Stop picking them up as much.’ But we’ve worked out a system where Brad just lifts them to me every time they want to come up. I just don’t bend down. I’ll scream ‘Honey!’ and he’ll come running and lift them up. Or they climb on chairs so it’s not as big of a lift. So we’re trying to follow doctor’s orders, but I’m bending them a tiny bit.”

As for Jolie and Pitt’s sex life during pregnancy, she insists it’s not bad: “I think it’s quite the opposite. It’s great for the sex life. It just makes you a lot more creative. So you have fun and as a woman you’re just so round and full.” And what does she think about not being married and knowing what to refer to each other as? “We have that problem all the time. I say ‘partner’ sometimes. ‘Father of my children’ is too long. But half the time people refer to us as, ‘So, your wife this, your husband that.’ We’ve stopped correcting everybody. It’s not a big intentional thing not to marry. We immediately were a family when we became a couple, and children were the priority, and we’re both legally committed to the children. And that seemed to be the right thing,” she says.

What about Pitt’s mysterious tattoo on his back? “I drew that. We went to Davos. It’s not that we were bored at the World Economic Forum, but one night we didn’t have anything to do, so I was drawing on his back.” Is it permanent? “It is …he just liked it! The picture everybody saw was kind of awkward, but it just lines up beautifully on his back, just enhances the part of the body I like.” Does it mean anything? “I mean, it’s meaningful in that it’s us making angles and shapes out of each other’s body, that kind of a thing.

With six kids under the age of eight, it’s a wonder how she’s physically going to be able to handle it all. “Well, we weren’t expecting twins! So it did shock us and we jumped to six quickly,” she says. “But we like a challenge. We really don’t know. His mom and dad are on standby to come out and help. And fortunately we can hire help if we need it, but we’re going to try as we usually do to balance it as well as we can. The only thing for us when a new child comes home is just balancing the others. Our real focus now is: How do we make sure that the baby’s coming is not upsetting to other kids and makes them feel included. They’re old enough to feel included to change diapers themselves, to feed bottles themselves, like if I pump into a bottle. We’re trying to find ways where it can be a fun group thing. But the hard thing is every single day trying to find time for each of them privately. ‘Cause that’s our big thing. With our eldest, we have that last half and hour at night, Shiloh tends to be the first up in the morning. Everybody gets special time so we can make sure we know where they’re at.”

Jolie discusses her favorite way to spend a free Saturday, saying “I have a lot of those. Very simple things. On weekends we usually have family sleep. We always have one night a week where everybody stays up late, watches a movie and stays in our bed. We have, like, a slumber party.” And is there intense competition among the kids as to who sleeps where? “Yeah, but it’s funny: The boys tend to want to be near Mommy and the girls tend to want to be near Daddy. So it works out nicely.” (Cover Story, Page 20)