Angelina Jolie shared that if she were starting her career in the entertainment industry today, she might not have become an actress. In an interview published online with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, the Maleficent star said that she may have considered performing on stage but not in Hollywood.
Angelina Jolie expressed her desire to eventually leave Los Angeles because she has “lost the ability to live independently and travel freely.”
“I wouldn’t be an actress today,” Jolie explained. “When I was starting out, there wasn’t this expectation of being so public, sharing so much.”
While she doesn’t read anything about herself in the press, the actress acknowledges that she’s been in the public eye for so long that everything has been said. Jolie’s Hollywood roots go back to her parents, Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, both actors. After working on projects from a young age, including studying modeling and method acting, Jolie admitted, “[Hollywood] never influenced me much. I never took it as important or essential.”
She further stated, “I grew up in quite a wild place.” “Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So, you want authenticity.”
Once she received acclaim for her role in Girl, Interrupted in 1999, which earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she began experiencing depression and occasional thoughts of self-harm due to the sudden fame. “I wanted to run away,” Jolie said.
Throughout her career, she faced intense public scrutiny, especially regarding her divorce from Brad Pitt six years ago. During the filming of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil in 2018, Jolie realized the toll it took on her body, noting a change in her voice since her first portrayal of the character in 2014. “My body responds strongly to stress,” she explained. “I developed Bell’s Palsy just six months before the divorce.”
Jolie admitted that living in Los Angeles means she has “no real social life” because she faces paparazzi and unwanted attention whenever she leaves her home. This is another reason why she ultimately wants to leave.
“It’s part of what happened after my divorce,” she said. “I lost the ability to live independently and travel freely,” expressing her hope to spend more time at her home in Cambodia. “When possible, I’ll leave.”
At the beginning of this year, Jolie told Vogue that in recent years, she intentionally took on fewer roles in films and “only started doing work that doesn’t require long shoots.”
In this current phase of life, she said, “At 48, I’m understanding who I am.” She added, “I feel like I’m going through a period of change as a person. I’m feeling a little melancholic these days. I don’t feel like I’m the same as I was a decade ago, and I don’t want to be.”
