Actor, mother, humanitarian, winemaker, visiting LSE professor, cosmetics spokesmodel, UN special envoy, psychological baiter of poor Cambodian children. If you are one of those people convinced there is simply no epithet that could threaten the apotheosis of clearly batshit multi-hyphenate Angelina Jolie, you are directed toward her current Vanity Fair cover story. In which she explains how she came to cast the child lead in First They Killed My Father, the film she has directed and shot in Cambodia, and which is described as “a thank you to the country that transformed her”.
According to the magazine, “Jolie looked at orphanages, circuses and slum schools, specifically seeking children who had experienced hardship. In order to find their lead … the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away. The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie. ‘Srey Moch [the girl ultimately chosen] was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,’ Jolie says. ‘When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.’ Jolie then tears up. ‘When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.’”
Well, now. Even by Hollywood’s questionable human resources standards, auditioning vulnerable children like this seems … idiosyncratic. Opting to tell Vanity Fair about it even more so. Then again, and let me put this in as neutral a way as possible: if there was a provisional wing of Hollywood crazies, Angelina would sit on its army council. When Shirley MacLaine formally retires, Angelina will move into the big chair. In a town where boxes of frogs come as standard, she owns a 40-hectare amphibian sanctuary. And crucially – unless we’re frightfully ascetic – this is surely what we want from our Hollywood stars. Outrageous beauty, hilarious grandeur, and the sense that they haven’t been playing with a full deck of Happy Families cards since Reagan’s second term.
Whether it is what we want from our international aid icons is another question. Though one that it has been most unfashionable to even raise for a while. Some have tried – Human Rights Watch are also perturbed by the Vanity Fair article, calling Angelina’s reported decision to cast 500 officials from the current Cambodian army “a no-go zone”, “a red flag” and “a terrible mistake”. I know what you’re thinking: Angelina just can’t have made a human rights cock-up, on account of having “know your rights” tattooed on her neck. But it wouldn’t be the first time. When she and Brad Pitt bizarrely decided to have their baby in Namibia, they set up camp for a couple of months in a five-star resort with an LA obstetrician and so on. One thing led to another, and eventually the Namibian government obliged with a no-fly-zone, house-to-house searches by government-backed security teams, and a requirement that journalists entering the country to cover the birth had written permission from the Pitt-Jolies themselves. Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights wasn’t thrilled at control of their airspace being ceded to the stars of Mr & Mrs Smith, while the Washington Post wondered: “Surely Hollywood stars can’t dictate who enters and leaves a sovereign state?”
More innocent times, in so many ways. Brad and Angelina are now getting divorced, and Angelina’s interview appears in large part to be the rejoinder to a recent outing by Brad. Entitled “Brad Pitt in America’s National Parks”, this comprised a fashion advertorial featuring Brad sprawled in places such as White Sands National Monument, wearing $875 Emporio Armani waders, discussing court-ordered visitation rights and saying things such as: “I’ve never heard anyone laugh bigger than an African mother who’s lost nine family members. What is that? I just got R&B for the first time. R&B comes from great pain, but it’s a celebration. To me, it’s embracing what’s left. It’s that African woman being able to laugh much more boisterously than I’ve ever been able to.”
Angelina offers her own version of this to Vanity Fair. “You drive around here,” she explains of Los Angeles, “you can see a lot of people with many things, but not often expressing happiness. You go [to Cambodia], and you see the families come out with their blanket and their picnic to watch a sunset.”
An evergreen reminder that the simple souls of the third world are richer in all the important ways than the denizens of Hollywood. Even as another of their children is lost in childbirth, or they have to make just a couple of loaves feed a whole sunset picnic, our main takeout should be a brightside look at how much more cheery they come off compared to Marvel franchise stars.
All things considered, then, I have long marvelled at people’s ability to take Angelina hugely seriously, and elevate her to increasingly significant positions of influence. Some years ago I wrote a book lamenting the celebrification of culture, and back then I truly hoped that in the future, prolonged exposure to the weirdly narcissistic altruism of entertainers might cause the tide to turn a bit. I thought that people would eventually desire more concrete evidence that celebrities were having measurably positive affects on, say, aid outcomes, rather than continue to be fobbed off with vague suggestions they were “raising awareness”.
Instead, of course, a reality TV star sits in the White House, while others wonder whether The Rock 2020 may not be the answer. As for Angelina, the summit against warzone rape that she and William Hague held three years ago cost five times more than the entire UK budget for tackling rape in war zones for that year, and a year later was found to have had negligible impact. The incidence of sexual violence even increased in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they ran a joint initiative, according to a 2015 investigation. Yet confected humanitarian awards continue to be showered on her at expensive galas got up entirely in her honour, while the contributions of ordinary aid workers seem even less likely than ever to be honoured.
So, even measured against my own extraordinary capacity for being wrong, this may well have been a personal best. Celebrities mean well, so will cast their third world child actors as they please. I no longer trust that if you wait long enough by the river, the visiting professorships of Tomb Raider stars will float by.
- Since this article was published, Angelina Jolie has rejected the account given in Vanity Fair of the casting process for First They Killed My Father. Click here to view her comments.