Jolie-Pitt Love

Angelina Wants to Save the World
'A Mighty Heart' is the story of Mariane Pearl's unquenchable spirit. It's not a bad description of the actress who plays her, either.

June 25, 2007 issue - Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to dress actors in Pakistani police uniforms, hand them AK-47s and stand them in the dirt courtyard of a Muslim school in India while children were in class. Still, that gaffe would have been fast forgotten if the film being shot on campus, "A Mighty Heart," weren't about the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl by Muslim extremists—and weren't starring Angelina Jolie. When parents showed up that Nov. 16 afternoon to pick up their kids, the gates were closed to keep out the paparazzi who had surrounded the school, their telephoto lenses aimed like rifle scopes. The parents became anxious, so the school opened the gates, and the paparazzi flooded in with them. The film's security guards tried to hold back the crowd. A scuffle ensued. No one was injured. But the following morning, two of Jolie's bodyguards were arrested for intimidation. Unnamed sources in local newspapers claimed that the white British guards had shoved parents and kids and called them "bloody Indians" and "bloody Muslims." "People advised me that this movie was politically dangerous," Jolie says. "I thought maybe I shouldn't touch this. Maybe it would do more harm than good." Just like that—in a perfect storm of post-9/11 tensions and celebrity-obsessed media culture—a minor event had escalated into an international incident, and Jolie had gone from being the most famous star in India to its most famous racist.

The next morning, her bodyguards in jail, Jolie is in a 21st-floor hotel suite on the western edge of Mumbai, where she's set to shoot her final scene of "Heart" as Pearl's widow, Mariane. It will not happen. Jolie, wearing a wig of dark curls and brown contact lenses, sits cross-legged on the floor with four of her fellow actors. Her body is still, but there's anger in her voice. "We've become so eager to accuse people of being racist, but I would rather they make up almost any other story—about me sleeping with someone, anything—but that," she says. "It's not only a crazy accusation, but it's the most insulting thing you could say about me, that I would employ someone who would be disrespectful to someone's race or would harm a child. They take care of my kids." On the other side of the city, Brad Pitt, one of the film's producers, has gone to the police station to try to get the men released. Plans are in the works for him to be interviewed that evening by Barkha Dutt, a.k.a. "the Indian Oprah," to de-escalate the situation (Hollywood's version of fighting fire with fire). Jolie sighs. "People can just hate back and forth, and I understand my own country's irresponsibility with our foreign policy sometimes, but can't we please try to be open-minded, and see that there are some of us who are trying?" Within an hour, the hotel management will shut the film down. Protesters have threatened to surround the building. Jolie's square-shouldered security guard appears by her side and tells her, under his breath, "We need to move you now." Calmly she gathers her belongings, and then turns to a NEWSWEEK reporter. "OK," she says with a smile. "Let's run!"

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