BREAKING THE RULES
The Angelina Jolie Interview by Paul Fischer

In a short space of time, Angelina Jolie has rapidly emerged as one of Hollywood's most sought after hot stars. But for this alluring daughter of Oscar-winner Jon Voight, the road to fame has been far from easy as Paul Fischer discovered when he met the frank actress in Los Angeles.

The usually brunette Angelina Jolie sported a blonde look for one of her many screen outings. Perhaps the busiest young actress in Hollywood these days, Jolie can barely keep track of the different movies coming out which bear her name on the marquee. "Do you think I have a commitment problem? I haven't been home for like, I don't even remember." Jolie's hypnotic screen presence is further exemplified by her radiant personality. Tough and clearly smart, the actress enters the interview carrying a hefty book, 'The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country'. "It's actually a brilliant book, about true freedom and our country."

Jolie is also uncompromising, sharp and brutally honest, with a quick wit. Looking comparatively petite in a smart silver-grey pants suit, when her short height is commented upon, she responds with: "Just the men are shorter". The actress is taking a day off from yet another movie set to promote her latest opus, The Bone Collector, directed by Australia's Phillip Noyce and co-starring Denzel Washington. The latter plays an expert in the field of crime scene forensics, who suddenly becomes a quadriplegic after a horrible on-the-job accident. Four years later, a serial killer is on the loose, and this master cop suddenly develops a high interest in the mysterious case. Seeing that he cannot go to the crime scenes himself, he recruits the help of a young and tough street cop, brighter than most and a forensics hopeful (Jolie). Together, they attempt to piece together all of the clues in the puzzle, while at the same time become drawn to each other.

The actress is trying to steer away from the kinds of sexualised roles that initially defined her career - here there's no sense of that. "Actually this film was to start with a sex scene, but I said no. Even though I didn't have the pull, I still fought hard and, they agreed." It was a tough film for Jolie to embark upon, and comments that this character was the least extreme character she's ever played, but one of the toughest. "This one is less extreme but nearly drove me insane because she was so insane inside. Sometimes with the extreme ones, you're a character so you are free; this one was like: Be yourself, let those tears fall, be simple, and be still. You can't hide. Sometimes it can be harder. Gia was very much like me. She looked like me, had my voice and my personality. It was very hard to admit that I might cry and miss someone and need love. I had to learn Bone Collector. On this film it was just like being alone a lot."

Jolie concedes that it was rough for her, and her many own insecurities came to the surface doing a film which, many times, she had to carry. "It was really lonely and I went a bit nuts. From the beginning, I felt as if I was not capable of doing this, of leading a film and being responsible for this, of physically handling this, of saving a life and going in there and being a cop." Jolie even felt that throughout this process she wasn't even "useful as a human being, or even a good person. It was just all those things by yourself: Am I good enough, am I worth anything, really, on a spiritual deep level? You start to get into those things and this is what she had to go through, and then get through it." But get through it she did, and is happy to admit that despite the soul searching that went on within her, she ultimately came out smiling the other end, exemplified by the complexity of her performance, in what could easily have been another routine serial killer thriller. "Of course it's more than that. What's fascinating are the journeys these two characters undertake, and the deep relationship that evolves between them." She even adds, "the best sex I ever had was in this movie." She's referring to a point in the film, where she uses smell and intellect, as tools to seduce her quadriplegic mentor. "It was great seducing someone within your mind, a huge turn-on."

Jolie was born in 1975 to Academy Award and Golden Globe winning actor Jon Voight and former actress Marcheline Bertrand. Voight, who separated from Bertrand when Jolie was 1, remained in California while the family lived in the East Coast. "He was the perfect example of an artist who couldn't be married," she says. "He had the perfect family, but there's something for him that's very scary about that." Even though she planned to be a funeral director before becoming an actress, she says, "There's something about death that is comforting. The thought you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now." Angelina worked as a professional model in London, New York and Los Angeles. She also appeared in music videos for artists such as Meat Loaf, Lenny Kravitz, Antonello Venditti, The Lemonheads and The Rolling Stones. In addition, she appeared in five student films for the UCLA School of Cinema, all directed by her brother, James Haven Voight. Since becoming an actress, she used her middle name, Jolie, as her screen name, in order to succeed on her own merit. As she once recalled, "I love my father, but I am not him."    MORE