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vanityfair.com“It does feel different,” Angelina Jolie tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Janine di Giovanni, of her relationship with Brad Pitt since their surprise wedding, this past August. “It feels nice to be husband and wife.”
Jolie also spoke to di Giovanni about the vows the couple’s children wrote for them, saying, “They did not expect us never to fight, but they made us promise to always say, ‘Sorry,’ if we do. So they said, ‘Do you?,’ and we said, ‘We do!’ ”
Jolie’s prolific political activities suggest to di Giovanni that she may at some point try her hand at elected or appointed office. “When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered,” she tells di Giovanni. “Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility.” Jolie then catches herself. “But I honestly don’t know in what role I would be more useful—I am conscious of what I do for a living, and that [could] make it less possible.”
In di Giovanni’s last meeting with Jolie, however, Jolie’s opinion seems to have shifted. When directly asked if she sees herself pursuing a life in politics, diplomacy, or public service, Jolie says, “I am open.”
Jolie talks extensively about her experience befriending the subject of her upcoming feature, Unbroken, Louis Zamperini, a scrappy Italian American kid turned Olympic runner turned World War II airman turned hero. Jolie was at Zamperini’s bedside for some of the last days of his life, and managed to show him an early cut of the film. “It was an extremely moving experience,” she tells di Giovanni, in tears, “to watch someone watching their own life . . . someone so physically strong . . . and they are at the stage where their body is giving up.”
She continues, “And yet we laughed together, and talked about his mom. And being a man of such faith, he talked about all the people he believed he would be seeing on the other side. And that it would bring him peace. After a life of fighting, he could rest.”
At one point, Jolie recalls, Zamperini seemed to be failing. Then, as if from some deep reservoir of resolve, he rebounded. “[The doctors] said he was training to breathe on his own. And that’s what he always told me—you train, you fight harder than those other guys, and you win. You can take it. You make it.” At this point, Jolie grows more emotional, then collects herself. “Poetically, he stayed 40 days and 40 nights.” And then he passed on.
As for what’s next, Jolie is preparing to direct and star with Brad Pitt in By the Sea. She tells di Giovanni, “A few friends asked if we were crazy . . . [A film about] a married couple going through some difficulties . . . and I’m directing him.”