Angelina Jolie says firefighter role in new show was 'healing'
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Angelina Jolie plays a wild-land firefighter in her new movie, Those Who Wish Me Dead.
PHOTO: HBO MAX/ FACEBOOK
LOS ANGELES • Actress Angelina Jolie, who returns to an action flick after more than a decade, says she was drawn to Those Who Wish Me Dead because of the wild-land firefighter character she plays.
"I am drawn to people who have been through something and are broken and then find their way forward and overcome it," Jolie, 45, said in an interview with entertainment news portal ET Online on Wednesday.
One of her best-known action roles was in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), which catapulted her to the Hollywood A-list.
In the upcoming movie, which streams on HBO Max next month, she plays Hannah, a specially trained smoke jumper who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
She protects a young boy (Finn Little) from hitmen and a fire raging around them after he witnesses a murder.
"As an artiste, it's very healing to play people like that. She's been very healing for me, because you just get so broken and then you stand back up," Jolie said.
While she did not explicitly refer to any painful incidents in her personal life, she and former husband, actor Brad Pitt, 57, have been embroiled in a long-drawn divorce settlement and custody battle since 2016.
"On its surface, it feels like a great thriller, a great adventure across an unusual terrain inside a great fire," she said of the film directed by Taylor Sheridan, who helms the television series Yellowstone (2018 to present).
"Underneath it, it's a really emotional film. It's about people who have a great impact on each other and change each other. Emotionally and practically, they go through the fire."
