Angelina copes with changes in her life

She’s sultry and rebellious, and there’s a well-documented dark side lurking behind that provocative smile. No wonder Angelina Jolie is known for her riveting portrayals of tortured women. She earned a Golden Globe for Gia and a Globe and an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted. So, just what the heck is up with her latest role as a giggly big-haired blonde in the romantic comedy Life or Something Like It?

Well, Jolie is nothing if not unpredictable. With her far-out fascination with knives, tattoos and amulets filled with the blood of hubby Billy Bob Thornton, the 26-year-old revels in the unconventional.

Even when she became a mother recently, Jolie took that step in a way that wasn’t exactly mainstream – she adopted a Cambodian baby, who is currently in Africa, where she is filming Beyond Borders.

The ramifications of such life-changing decisions are reflected in Life or Something Like It, in which Jolie plays TV reporter Lanie Kerrigan. The comedy takes a serious turn after a homeless man with a reputation for predicting the future tells her she will die within a week, causing her to seriously reorder her priorities.

Along the way, Jolie gets plenty of chances to be ditzy – coping with tight skirts, long nails and spike heels – as she throws herself into slapstick with abandon.

Q: Life or Something Like It is your first full-on comedy role. Was it pretty serious business for you?

Angelina: Comedy is much harder for me. It takes a certain kind of energy and being out there that I don’t just naturally feel. I’m more introspective – I kind of live inside myself. But comedy is fun once you get in the swing of it. You just kind of hold your breath and go, Okay, I’m gonna go for it.

Q: You and co-star Ed Burns have some moments of romance, but they didn’t come close to the passion you shared with Antonio Banderas in Original Sin.

Angelina: Life or Something Like It is a comedy. I don’t think we needed to show any graphic sexuality. Actually, I think Original Sin was a film that was very misrepresented by the press as being mainly a sexfest. It was also very much about analyzing the desires and needs and desperation that can drive love. You couldn’t show that without the sex. But this film is about sweet love. It’s very different.

Q: This movie paralleled some reevaluation you were going through in your own life, didn’t it?

Angelina: Yeah. It came at a time when I had just decided I was not going to do another film, because I had discovered what Lanie discovers – that you can work and work and work and let the rest of life pass you by. You’re not building a family and a home and all the things that are going to matter. At the end of your day, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what’s really important. But when I got the script, everybody said, ‘It’s everything you’ve been talking about and coming to terms with.’ And I knew that Billy Bob was going to be working. So, I thought, ‘Do this one more film, and then you can both take six months off and be together.’ And that’s exactly what happened. In a sense, playing Lanie helped me to focus my own priorities.

Q: The movie raises the question: How would you change your life if you were confronted with the possibility that your death was imminent? So, how would you change your life?

Angelina: I wouldn’t change anything. I don’t live that way. That’s probably why everybody thinks I’m insane, because I already live as if every day could be the last. I don’t waste time doing things I don’t think are important. I don’t hold back saying something I feel I need to say. If I have an opportunity to try something or do something, I always do it. And that’s just how I live – pretty boldly and honestly.

Q: And certainly at the center of that feeling of being in control must be your relationship with Billy Bob, because the two of you seem to be so incredibly close.

Angelina: My marriage is a huge support to living my life the way I want to. I have a friend who keeps me strong and (with whom) I can share everything. And because of that, I’m able to now do so many more things with my life, and see life differently. I have his strength to complement my own.

Q: In Life or Something Like It, your character asks Stockard Channing, who plays a very famous TV interviewer, if she has any regrets about her life and career. How would you answer that question?

Angelina: I don’t have any. I don’t believe in regrets. If you regret things, you might be tentative about what you’re going to do next. I don’t anticipate anything that could make me feel regret. I just do whatever. But I’ve been fortunate. I’ve survived things that maybe I would have regretted attempting – but because I survived, I didn’t. So, I certainly feel very lucky in my life.

(Distributed by Warner Bros., Life or Something Like It is a Twentieth Century Fox film opening in Metro Manila on July 3.)f