Angelina Jolie taking on fewer movie roles because of uncertainties in her life
Angelina Jolie says in a new interview she is pursuing new projects, including fashion and an artists space. Credit: Getty Images / Vittorio Zunino Celotto
Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie says she has taken on fewer movie roles than she might have otherwise in recent years because of uncertainties in her personal life and the pull of projects in fashion and on Broadway.
Saying that she is “still understanding who I am at 48” and calling herself “in transition as a person,” the star says in the new issue of Vogue magazine that, “I feel a bit down these days. I don’t feel like I’ve been myself for a decade, in a way, which I don’t want to get into." The mother of six children between 15 and 22 years old, she filed for divorce from fellow film star Brad Pitt in September 2016. Contentious proceedings kept the dissolution of the marriage from being finalized until April 2019, and child-custody issues as yet remain unresolved.
Following the films “Maleficent” (2014) and “By the Sea” (2015) — the latter on which she was billed as Angelina Jolie Pitt — she did no features for four years until the sequel “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” (2019). She has done only three live-action movies since, and only one of them — 2021’s “Those Who Wish Me Dead” — in a lead role.
Telling Vogue she began doing fewer movies “seven years ago, only taking jobs that didn’t require long shoots,” Jolie explained without specifics that, "We had a lot of healing to do. We’re still finding our footing.”
She has been doing so, she said, through projects such as her new socially conscious and ecologically sustainable fashion line and soon-to-open artists space and cafe, Atelier Jolie. Set to debut in November at the formerly Andy Warhol-owned 57 Great Jones St., where his friend, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, famously rented the second floor, Atelier Jolie has “been therapeutic for me — to work in a creative space with people you trust and to rediscover yourself.” She added, “I’m hoping to change many aspects of my life. And this is the forward-facing one.”
Jolie, who has been announced to play the legendary opera diva Maria Callas in the biographical drama “Maria” and is rumored but unconfirmed in other films, is also now a stage producer on the upcoming Broadway adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel “The Outsiders,” already made into a 1983 film by Francis Ford Coppola.
“I feel very fortunate to be a part of this special production,” she said in a statement in August, adding in part, “I hope to be able to contribute while continuing to learn from this amazing team, who I have been working with since my daughter brought me to see the show at La Jolla Playhouse” in southern California.
Jolie, whose social media is limited to Instagram, has not commented further on topics raised in her interview.