« Wait And See Mode Regarding Rumor Saying There Is A Michelle Obama Tape | Main | Rock Pioneer Bo Diddley Another Legend Gone »
June 02, 2008
Angelina Jolie and Brad All For Firearms and "not afraid to use them."
'I've got my Tomb Raider guns - and I'm not afraid to use them,' says Angelina
"Angelina Jolie has revealed she owns real versions of the guns she toted in the movie Tomb Raider - and she and partner Brad Pitt wouldn't be afraid to use them. The actress, who is rumoured to have given birth to twin girls Isla and Amelie, says she and Pitt keep a firearm in their house to protect themselves and their expanding brood..."
A solid gold pendant nestles in the plunging neckline of Angelina Jolie's black dress.
Forgive me if this is the first thing I notice when she rises to greet me.
But it leaps out because it’s no ordinary bauble; it has the unmistakable shape of a machine gun.
Apparently it was made by a jeweller based on a drawing by her son, Maddox, and given to her as a Mother's Day present by her partner, Brad Pitt.
I suppose I'm mostly taken aback because of our situation; Jolie is very pregnant, with twins expected any day now, and we are in the rarefied surroundings of a suite in the Carlton hotel in Cannes.
It's old-school luxury: yellow Provençal wallpaper, a salmon-pink sofa upon which Jolie perches and a matching chair for me.
As it happens, she is even more rarefied than the setting – and this suite costs £1,600. Despite the Carlton being the temporary home of all the big Hollywood studios and production companies during the film festival, she and Pitt are actually staying in a £4,000-a-night villa at the Hotel du Cap, a 30-minute drive from Cannes on the outskirts of Antibes, where Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro and Madonna are also staying. A helicopter is on standby there for a swift maternity-hospital transfer.)
But as it happens, the machine-gun motif is entirely apt, as we begin by talking about guns and how she would kill for real if compelled to do so. One of the movies she's in Cannes to promote is Wanted, in which she plays assassin Fox, part of a shadowy team called the Fraternity who kill the bad guys before the bad guys get to kill anyone else.
James McAvoy plays a nerd who's hauled out of a boring, nine-to-five existence to be trained up. McAvoy said he felt odd handling the weapons in the film.
Jolie had no such qualms. And she says intense training in various combat techniques for films such as Wanted and Mr & Mrs Smith – the action thriller on which she met Pitt – means she could protect herself in a fight if she had to.
'If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I've no problem shooting them,' she says with a dry candour.
'I bought original, real guns of the type we used in Tomb Raider for security. Brad and I are not against having a gun in the house, and we do have one. And yes, I'd be able to use it if I had to. I could handle myself. I think there are certain combat skills that would come out. I tend to want to throw an elbow. I don't know why. I've learned all the punches, head butts and kicks – yet getting someone with my elbow is my first instinct.
'I think it's good for anybody to learn a skill when it comes to fight training – be it kung fu, boxing or kick-boxing – because self-defence is important. Brad and I want our kids to learn it. They're going to get into a fight some day, so they might as well learn how to take care of themselves.
I was kind of a punk when I was a kid, but I didn't get picked on. I was left alone because I was a bit of a loner. I would get into fights on behalf of other people. I wasn't a pushover. So I wasn't the one who was targeted.
'There's a side to me that people know is humanitarian, and there's a side to me that's a mummy. But there's also the side that likes to get down and dirty and run and jump around and fire guns. I don't want to lose touch with that. That's one of the reasons I like to do action movies. It's good for me every once in a while.'
Looking at her now, I believe she could handle herself. She's looked thin, but not any more; Jolie is impressively big – she rests a protective hand on her mighty bump during our talk – and her arms are no longer bony.
She's 33 in a few days' time; her exotic face, with those skyscraper-high cheekbones and naturally full lips which must be on the wall of every plastic surgeon in Hollywood, look just as good in real life.
She has a deep West Coast drawl and is refreshingly direct – ask a question and she bats it right back .
She is still completely redolent of the girl who looked sensational in Lara Croft's spray-on latex tankini, complete with a Magnum in each thigh holster, or the sexy, heavily tattooed, gun-toting assassin she plays in Wanted.
Based on the Mark Millar comic books, the film contains violent action throughout, but Jolie has no issue with this.
'If the Fraternity was just a bunch of people that killed for fun and enjoyed torturing people, then I wouldn't be interested. But I liked this idea that if there were people who you knew were going to kill others in the future, should you take them out? And that's interesting in a bigger political way.
'For example, we have an international criminal court that can issue arrest warrants for Darfur, the Congo and other places. But are we ready to back it up? And if we don't back it up, what's the other solution? 'Do we just go to war and kill a bunch of civilians in the process? I think there does need to be something to prevent other kinds of violence.'
These days, when Jolie kicks loose it's on a film set in action movies. It's also a good way of impressing the children, apparently – Maddox, seven, whom she adopted as a baby before she started seeing Pitt; Pax, four, and Zahara, three, who are both also adopted; and two-year-old Shiloh, her biological daughter with Pitt.
'Maybe they'll finally think I'm cool, because now, for them, I'm just Mum. My son asks me to play a video game and I'm appalling at it, and so is Brad.
We don't even understand it properly. So maybe one day my kids will see films like Wanted and see that Mum is not a total dork.'
But what about the violence? 'It's just not a reality in this day and age to say, "I'm never going to let my kids watch a movie that has a gun in it." It's important to know that this exists. But I'm very clear with my children about who's a good guy and who's bad. If they're watching a movie at home and they say, "Is that a bad guy, Mummy?", I say, "Well, is he trying to hurt somebody?" If you see somebody picking on a person or starting the fight, that's the bad guy.'
She didn't prepare as intensely for Wanted as she did for the two Tomb Raider films. 'I didn't get into such great shape, because I just don't have the time, with the kids. I used to be able to train all the time, but it's different now. My body has changed, I've had a baby and I've breast-fed, although bringing up four children is harder than making an action movie.
'In Wanted, James and I have a fight, and I get to kick his ass – it's always fun to do that stuff. I like doing the risky stunts. It's an adrenaline rush and it's fun. It's very much in our family. Brad and I met doing that kind of thing on Mr & Mrs Smith. We have a healthy competition in the house for craziness.'
That love of an adrenaline kick extends to driving and flying. Not for her a girly party to celebrate her pregnancy:
'My girlfriends rented a sports car for me instead. So Brad and I just drove around LA in this Mercedes all day. It was fantastic. I love to drive, but I don't get to do it very much these days, because I don't like being followed by the paparazzi.'
Freedom and security are constant themes with her..
She and Pitt own a single-prop Cirrus aircraft and both have a pilot's licence. 'I've now got an instrument rating, which means I can fly in bad weather and at night.
'The plane has a parachute – like a rocket chute – in case you get into trouble. I love the idea of just being up in the air, but I think it's more about the travel for me, the freedom it represents.
Her work as a goodwill ambassador for the Office of the UN High Commissioner For Refugees began after filming the first Tomb Raider movie in Cambodia.
She then started visiting other troubled countries – more than 20 to date – and along with Pitt has donated millions of dollars to humanitarian projects.
'When you've been raised around Hollywood and you suddenly find yourself with a backpack in a war zone, where people are dying and crying because they don't have enough food for their kids, you very quickly realise what matters.
At the time it was like being smacked in the face and told, "What are you so upset about?" From that moment on I never lost that focus. 'On my first trip to Sierra Leone I ended up in a convoy with just one other woman.
'Another truck broke down, the group became separated and suddenly we were responsible for truckloads of people. It was getting dark and we were going through roadblocks that were just some guys with guns.
'And that was the country where they were cutting everybody's arms and feet off. And I remember thinking, "God, they could just decide to kill us… What am I doing here?" I remember having this bizarre feeling of being very far from home and feeling very vulnerable.'
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Good, I am glad to read this. I am so glad that she is almost a spokesperson for defending her family like this. And this most certainly wasn’t Liberal talk coming out of her. Good! Maybe one day she and her Dad, Jon Voight will see more eye to eye about politics as well. He is not a conservative but he at least is a Republican and we can always hope he will move more to being a conservative the whole way.
Jolie is not your ordinary Hollywood airhead. She has done a lot of work on behalf of refugiees, including going to Iraq and meeting with US military commanders. She came out against a US withdrawal.
Maybe some of the other celebs in Hollywood will stop wanting to make TV shows with an agenda of banning guns. There are some that do have guns in their homes and know how to use them. But we seldom hear about them so that is why this article is good for it to get out, to encourage others to realize how important it is to be protected and know how to use a gun. Maybe she could even use her influence to stop the Small Arms garbage at the UN. Just a thought anyway.
I wish she would speak to the idiots in our government that are so bound and determined to try and push the ban on guns. I am also glad to see this was published in the UK news outlet. they need more then even people in the USA that guns are more then necessary in the world we live in now.
Posted by Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 04:55 AM
Comments
Something you very seldom here coming out of Shallowood. Most of the personalities there are so liberal and leftist it is hard to imagine. If any of these turkeys that cuddle up to the likes of Hugo Chavez had there fortunes confiscated by the state they would be crying for the same military they degrade to protect them. Very out of touch with reality people.
Posted by: Bob at June 2, 2008 06:21 AM
It is refreshing to see a young, fabulous starlet who is intelligent, well informed and not afraid to take a chance for once. She's a great mom and has some great ideas. Perhaps someday, after her career is over, she should become an ambassador. She certainly has the qualities and she's been all over the place, so she knows what's what.
I'm with her, if anyone EVER tried to hurt my family in any way, I have NO QUALMS about shooting them either. They have NO right to be in my house or on my property without permission and they have NO right to act like a goon in public.
Posted by: Lynn at June 2, 2008 07:59 AM
Good for her. Unfortunately the vast majority of the elite own firearms but they don't want you and I owning them.
Posted by: BobF at June 2, 2008 09:27 AM
A refreshing change from hollywood's usual over emphasis on liberal thoughts. I remember her recent trip to Iraq and her support of both the troops and the war. It would be fun to go to the shooting range with her.
Posted by: TomR at June 2, 2008 11:31 AM
A woman with a gun. That's a mixed blessing, to say the least.
Posted by: Rhod at June 2, 2008 01:44 PM
...and I can say that because I'm married to one.
Posted by: Rhod at June 2, 2008 01:45 PM
There was a cartoon going around a few years ago, it was a picture of a Cat, that looked like it had just received an electrical shock, the Cat looked just down right mean and nasty. the Caption was, " I've got PMS and a .38 any questions".
Posted by: Mark at June 2, 2008 05:28 PM
Be careful you guys, Stepperg has a Mossberg 12 ga and its loaded.
Posted by: cuchieddie at June 2, 2008 06:49 PM
Bob, yes it makes it even more unusual because of that.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:01 PM
Lynn, I agree I was glad to see this.
I was thinking of you when I read this story, your such a good mom and some of the things she said about her kids and protecting them just made me think of a lot of the things you have said.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:04 PM
BobF, yes like oh who was it. I forget, but they were bashing guns like crazy and then it came out the person had guns and also body guards with guns. How phony that was. No oneo has to broadcast they have guns by choice, but to bash having them and be a liar about it is horrible.
I am all for guns and feel a lot safer even just knowing we have them.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:08 PM
Tom, that is wonderful that she went to Iraq. I am so glad she is for the war too.
What fun, that would be so neat if you two did that.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:15 PM
Rhod......giggle.....yes that's for sure. heh heh
And your wife is awesome!! Both you two are!!
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:18 PM
Mark, LMAO how funny. That would be very scary. hahahahaha
I knew a girl once that had that PMS really bad, .... the key word is " once ". I never knew anyone before that had it like she did. She turned into a monster. hahaa I felt sorry for her husband and 4 kids.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:24 PM
Cuchieddie...she is sooooo lucky. Fantastic!
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 2, 2008 07:26 PM
Thank you Indiana -- I have a lifetime concealed carry permit; and thanks to the USMC I know how to use weapons.
That's a priceless feeling of peace of mind -- carrying and knowing how to use.
Posted by: OINK at June 2, 2008 08:33 PM
OINK, I agree so much, it is a good feeling.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 3, 2008 04:18 AM
