“The worst moments of my life are linked to celebrity”

Cannes, May 17, 2025. The film festival is on the rails and, the day before, Angelina Jolie has handed over the prestigious Chopard trophy to two rising glories, the Frenchman Marie Columbus and the English Finn Bennett. The American superstar is not exactly at the height of comfort when thousands of eyes stare at it, but pays for its mission with the enthusiasm and professionalism relating to its status. It is found on the seventh floor of Martinez, in the elegant chopard salons, the prestigious Swiss luxury house Joaillière and watchmaker, a faithful partner of the Cannes festival and flawless support of cinema in general. She wears a set -mmed cream set (“I’m not fashionable”, she has fun), and very carefully listens to her questions.

What strikes Angelina Jolie is her slow gestures, her benevolent gaze that fixes you, her soft voice, her extremely posed speech. The face of dignity. There is gravity in her, a perceptible painful vibration, a completely atypical feature in the star-system-a fortiori Hollywood-where any beginner takes invulnerable and conquering airs. But the star-system is no longer, and has probably never been, its priority. Cinema has not been enough to fill the life of Angelina Jolie, superstar, director, who devotes most of her time to her activities as a human rights activist, who seems to have chosen the humanitarian priesthood that leads her tirelessly on war areas, for a long time.

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She says she is “humanist, but especially internationalist.” Citizen of the world, obviously. Angelina Jolie intrigues, fascinates, derives perhaps, but no one can question the sincerity and the constancy of her commitments, a woman in the field who inspects the refugee camps, speaks to Davos or challenges international institutions. It is an eminent activist, which values the local economy, but above all encourages the autonomy of women in disadvantaged regions: thus, hives were installed in Cambodia, its country of heart, where it resides in part, seat of its foundation, the Maddox Foundation, which also works to preserve the environment and to improve the living conditions of rural communities. In the cinema, she turns little and seems to be moving towards singular projects. After Mariaof the very author Pablo Larraín, she ventures into a French film by Alice Winocour, seams (released on October 15). She plays a film director plunged into the fashion world during an advertising shoot in Paris, whose fundamentals of life will be revised when a dramatic episode occurs. She meets Ella Rumpf, makeup artist who dreams of herself a novelist, and Louis Garrel, her assistant and a night lover.

Madame Figaro. – What has convinced you to accept to be the godmother of the Chopard trophy, who celebrates an actor and an actress with promising talent each year?
Angelina Jolie. – I like the idea of such a device, a program that aims to encourage, support and support young people. It is one of the beautiful facets of the Cannes Film Festival, and I am very happy to be involved this year. I spoke with the two winners, they already seemed brilliant and already entirely dedicated to their art. They are balanced, anchored, very aware of all aspects of the profession. In addition, I am also a director: it is very interesting for me to discover with Chopard who is the new cinema guard, in other words the actors of tomorrow.

Are you a model for young actors?
It is difficult for me to answer this question. When I was their age, there was no question for me to imagine that one day I could be inspiring for anyone. If I am, perhaps, today, this not only for what I did well, but also for my mistakes …

Your mistakes?
Not really errors, let’s say life and fluctuations in life. What is positive is that I am happy to be able to lead an artist’s life. However, I have never taken everything for cash, more exactly public life, celebrity. I am an extremely private person. And when I happen to tread a red carpet with my children, the idea is really to have fun together. Art must be a source of joy.

How to make the distinction between public and private life when everything is particularly scrambled today?
As I have no taste for fame, it is very easy for me to separate the territories. The worst moments in my journey, the darkest moments are when fame and its excesses have entered my life. Nothing is less natural. What I like is art, commitment, films, exchanges. It is very exciting to be carried by an artistic project and to share it with a team, when everyone looks in the same direction. But everything related to fame is not only without interest, but above all very bulky.

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How to reconcile all these contradictory states?
I try as I can. I come from another generation, a generation where you could make a film, disappear for a year and come back. In the meantime, you were almost allowed to live your life as a private person. Today, this is no longer really the tendency to disappear without giving news. Everything is nested and the times – social networks – enjoins you to comment on any activity of your agenda. If I started today, I couldn’t adapt. I would be too “private”, and I would be reclassified as “non -bankable.” I am probably too irregular for social networks and not at all comfortable with continuous communication.

What woman were you at the age of the winners of the Chopard trophy?
I was already a mother. I had adopted my son Maddox and I carried out missions to the United Nations. I had already started the transition to another life.

What advice to give to a young actor or a young actress?
Put art at the center of his concerns. Do not be shy and integrate the community of artists. To exchange. Share.

Art must be a source of joy

Angelina Jolie

At 20, what actresses inspired you?
Oddly, my models were men. Alan Bates, Marlon Brando, actors. Of course, I liked Meryl Streep, like everyone else, but I was not a film buff at that time, no. Maybe because my father was an actor (Jon Voight, 86, Oscar for best actor in 1979 for return, by Hal Ashby, editor’s note))? There were already too many films in my life … I saw that all of this was not real. What interested me among the actors was not their characters but their personalities … I did not change much mind: to the known people, I prefer singular artists.

You grew up in the Hollywood seraglio…
Yes, this is probably a little strange thing. My godmother is Jacqueline Bisset and my godfather Maximilian Schell. But I especially learned a lot from my mother (Marcheline Bertrand, died at 56, in 2007, editor’s note). My mother had been an actress, she was not famous, but she had studied the theater and continued to love her: it was with her that I discovered my first pieces.

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Your mother stopped her career when she got married …
She was happy like that, I think. As I told you, she continued to attend theater people. My daughter Vivienne looks a lot like her-she did not know her grandmother-, it is disturbing, and I reproduce with her what my mother did for me: I make her discover texts. I took her to see a piece by Tennessee Williams, who was a great friend of my mother, which amazed Vivienne. When my father played a tram named desire, she attended all the representations, pregnant, very inconvenienced, and each evening Tennessee was seated by her side to watch over her. A great artist …

Your mother spoke French …
She was Canadian and French. This may be what explains that I have a very special link with France. I just turned Seamsa film by Alice Winocour, and I have some scenes in French … you will see …

I have never taken everything for cash: public life like celebrity

Angelina Jolie

From Maria where you play Maria Callas, your career seems to take a more authorist tour …
I liked to turn with Pablo Larraín. The scenario is brilliant. Today, I like to put myself at the service of great artists. I really want to get away from what I have already done. And then, there is a very new thing for me in my way of choosing the projects: as the films occupy a few months of a life, I want to make sure to join a generous, united, creative, benevolent community. I want to share experiences with good people.

One last question. The world seems to be becoming more and more crazy. Can you share your fears and hopes?
(She takes breathing.) I try to continue to learn and observe. It is imperative to inform yourself, to get into it, in order to understand what is happening in the world, the state of the world. We must be careful at the cookie judgments. As far as I’m concerned, I work with people, I read, I attend conferences. My wish? That political intentions are followed by effects, that they do not remain political announcements. Alas, we can see that the madness of power, control and profit takes precedence over what should be a united momentum, the development of the poorest nations. We see too many territories where conflicts and misery are a source of profits for some. I base a lot of hope on local economies, which allow residents to acquire autonomy by freeing themselves from the dominant system. I know that it takes time, but it is a virtuous system that I am very close to the field, in Cambodia for example, where my foundation, conceived in 2003, focuses on the economic stability of a community, but also on its health and the protection of its environment. I think there is a track to follow: this kind of initiatives can make snowball and benefit from neighboring communities, and so on, allowing premises to establish and have their own networks prosper.

Seamsd’Alice Winocour, with Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf… released on October 15. Chopard.com