AMERICANWAY

COURTESY NBCUNIVERSAL There were stories of late-night partying and depression. There was the famous feud with her father and two short- lived marriages. All these events from a different period in time were documented in extremis and were Part One of Angelina Jolie's Epic Adventure. Part Two, on the other hand, has yielded one of the most impressive, most important and most benevolent public transformations in the history of humanity, let alone Hollywood. The Tomb Raider herself is not only a Special Envoy and former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations but has also made it her mission to give a voice to millions of uprooted people around the world — from Sudan to Iraq to Cambodia to Afghanistan — and advocate for their protection. She has literally saved lives of women and children with her dollars as much as with her words. And she's saved lives right here in the U.S. because of a phenomenon called "The Angelina Effect," which hits particularly close to home for me. In May 2013, Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed in The New York Times titled, "My Medical Choice." The ground- breaking, headline-generating article said that she was BRCA1 positive, which means she has inherited a genetic mutation that sharply increases her risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. In a very moving, very lyri- cal writing style, Jolie described the aggressive measures she took to factor cancer out of her life. She quietly had a preventative double mastectomy. Then she broke her silence because, as she put it, "there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the The pur pose of this lunch meeting is to discuss A ngelina Jolie's for thcoming mov ie, Unbroken, the cinematic adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's New York Times best-selling book about the life of Louie Zamperini. Read the book and you'll agree that the Academy Award- winning actress could easily and handily play the role of any of the women in the story: Louie's crestfallen-yet- hopeful sister, his gorgeous-though-oft-disillusioned wife, his hard-working, tough-as-nails mother. But Jolie kept herself behind the lens and is the director of this soon-to-be Christmas blockbuster and beautifully de- picted study of the human condition. Our conversation starts with subtle small talk: I'm with American Way, I loved Hillenbrand's book, I loved you in your feature-film directorial debut with In the Land of Blood and Honey, and I'm excited to see how you approached this unbelievable story of Louie Zamperini. Immediately, she straightens in her chair, using four fingers to delicately pull her hair behind her ears, and looks down in search of the right words. "I think we need to have — I certainly do, personally — some example that reminds me of the human spirit," she says, "someone I can hold up as an example to my children; something that 's an epic adventure but that has spirituality and strength." It 's the last pa r t of Jolie's statement that ca n be interpreted as a self-ref lection of her bifurcated life. Early on, the daughter of famous parents Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand was a tabloid-headline grabber. "I'm truly, truly happy when I'm able to feel that I'm OF USE TO OTHER PEOPLE." SWEATING THE DETAILS: Angelina Jolie's work ethic results in long editing sessions. Jack O'Connell reflects Jolie's intensity in his por- trayal of Zamperini battling to survive a brutal Japanese POW camp. 5 8 D EC E M B E R 2 01 4 A A .CO M/A M E R I C A NWAY

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