Brad Pitt at The Good Shepherd Premiere

Fresh from filming The Good Shepherd, Angelina Jolie opens up for the first time about falling for Brad, life as a mother of three and why she doesn’t need a shoulder to cry on. By Jonathan Van Meter. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
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Route 40, at a dusty old airstrip in the desert called the Barstow-Dagget Airport- airport being something of a misnomer, a word that conveys a sense of modernity that this place most certainly does not possess. There are two tiny runways and a few long wooden sheds where a handful of single prop planes are parked out of the life-leaching sun. There are also a couple of humongous empty hangars, built in the 1930s, that were used by the military during World War II and look as if they haven’t been painted since. I woildn’t be the least bit surprised to see a tumbleweed roll right on through or to find the bleached-out skeleton of a years-dead longhorn out behind the toilet. In fact, it is so Land That Time Forgot here that the only planes that come and go all day are the two that belong to the heroine of our story.

Angelina Jolie loves this place. Something about its broken-down beauty and military history speaks to her dual craving for authenticity and manliness. She calls it, simply, “Dagget.” As in “Brad and I like to fly in to meet our motorcycles at Dagget. One time we took a three hour bike ride in the desert to a place where we spent the night alone. And then we rode the bikes back to Dagget and flew back to L.A. to our kids before dinner the next evening.” Impossibly romantice , you say? Sit tight. It gets better.

We have all gathered at this remote, intoxicating place-there is a Vogue/Annie Leibovitz crew of nearly 50- because it seemed like a fine setting for capturing the spirit of the post-pregnancy Jolie, The daredevil adventuress insta-mother-ofthree who seems to have an unquenchable thirst for the uncharted and off-the-grid. This is a woman who thinks nothing of helicoptering onto the top of a mountain in post-earthquake Pakistan for Thanksgiving when she is three months pregnant. Or of moving to Namibia to give birth to her and Pitt’s daughter, Shiloh, in a tiny hospital in a one gynecologist town. “W aren’t completely insane,” she tells me. “We looked for places that were not rife with malaria and dengue fever, and Namibia is good for that because it’s so dry.” Indeed just yesterdar, she flew her oen Cirrus SR22single engine plane to the photoshoot, the first half of which took place many miles from the airport, in the giant sand dunes near Death valley, where you could see the red glow from some terrible fire burning in the distance and where the sun blazed and the wind blew and the sand pelted everyone for hours on end.The shoot went too late for Jolie to fly home in the dark, so she, like therest of the crew checked herself to a Ramada, somehting she seemed to relish. “When Brad and I take road trips,” she says, “we love Taco Bell and a roadside motel.”

I didn’t mean to sleep with Brad Says:

December 14th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I didn’t mean to open my legs to Brad while he was still with his wife.
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Just swallow your jealousy. Chinnocchio opened her legs to fat boy VV, and yet she couldn’t keep him.

Today the shoot is all about Angelina and her toys; motorcycles and airplanes. When I arrive however the mood is grim. Jolie is famously difficult to photograph; she does not like being styled, because i think , it forces her to wrestle with the two sides of her public image: tattooed tough girl and insanely famous sex bomb. Despite having approved of the clothes at a fitting a few days ago, now she is not in Carolina Herrea or Bill Blass mood. Just after the fitting, back in the hotel toom in Beverly Hills, I asked Jolie about her thony relationships to the photo shoot. “It’ is always just an awkward thing for me” She said.”I’m not modeling. It’s me. I’m a person. And yet I’m selling clothes while trying to promote a movie. It’s very odd . And yet , in our world today, It’s been a very successful formula. It works. We play dress up. But it’s not really us. We’ve lost all sense of portraiture, and that’s too bad.

But here and now, in the desrt, she cannot help but fall under the spell of the master. Leibovitz has coaxed Jolie out of her trailer, where she had been quietly stalling, by letting her choose the tough girl/tomboy option… for now. She steps out into the sun with big hair. She is wearing a pair of skinny leather pants and a dark trench, like she is ready to shoot Mad Maxine, a remake with her in the Mel Gibson role (note to Hollywood: not the worst idea). After shifting around awkwardly for a moment, she swings a leg over her motorcycle and speeds off in a cloud of dust with a big maniacal grin on her face-happy, hours later, the star of our show has, like magic, morphed into the other Angelina, the sexy man killer in a pencil skirt, the kind of look that she sports in those fantastic St. John ads. She is wearing a very formfitting white linen Ralph Lauren suit with heels and a great big pair of white-and-silver Gucci sunglasses. Interestingly enough, and perhaps unbeknownst to Jolie, this side of her packs just as much punch.

As a couple of burly, rough looking fellows tow Jolie’s plane out to the runway and ready it to fly, Jolie flirts and laugh with the ground crew and a few military guys who are hanging around. A young pimply -faced fat kid appears and sheepishly asks for her autograph. She handles him with such sweetness that i worry that the rest of his life will all be downhill from here. Guys whip out cell phones and pose with her. She looks at ease and in her element: all dolled up, surrounded by men.

I had asked Jolie a few days ago if I could fly with her, and she told me she had never taken a passenger before but would think about it. When I arrived at the photoshoot, I told her that I mentioned to my mother that I might fly with her and that my mother did not like the idea of it one bit. Jolie Luaghed it off. Now, as i amd watching her kick off her stilettos (she pilots barefoot) and step up onto the wing of her little white place, she stops for a second and stares at me standing off to the side. There is a glint in her eye. A big smile spreads across her face. “Let’s go scare your mother,” she says.

Santa luv Says: December 14th, 2006 at 11:52 pm

There is a glint in her eye. A big smile spreads across her face. “Let’s go scare your mother,” she says.

^^

LMAO! I LOVE IT!!! That made my night/morning (it’s midnight) THAT’S Angelina Jolie!

Thanks so much for posting…

jpf

Thanks Santa luv for taking the time to type the article. Quite a long interview. I like it so much, so far. Will have till tomorrow to get it, along with People.

Thank you Santa luv for typing the interview. This is very sweet of you. Wow!

She’s so funny and the one thing Angelina isn’t, is never boring.

Only as I am jammed in the back nect to Leibovitz, bumping along the dinky little runway, does the reality of what I’m doing sink in. I Imagine the headline: Angelina Jolie and Annie Leibovitz die in a plane crash near Las Vegas. I try to remember who went down with Patsy Cline, but I can;t I am about to become a trivia question. I tell myself this will be a suitably fabulous way to die, and just like that we are in the air, floating above the desert, and my nerves are gone. “I’ll do some tight turns,” says jolie. “Maddox likes it when there are G-forces.” We swoop to the right and then to the left. My stomach drops. Leibovitz snaps off a bunch of shots, then climbs over into the front seat while i hold her cameras. More swooping. More snapping and as quickly as we lifted off, we are back on the ground. As we step out of the plane, someone comes running over to tell Jolie that Brad is on his way. He’ll be landing any minute.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I had dinner with Jolie at the L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills. At the time, she seemd to have happily settled into her post-Billy Bob life as a single mom, after having adopted Maddox from Cambodian in 2002. Jolie was in L.A. to shoot Mr and Mrs Smith and had just begun rehearsels. She had known Brad Pitt for only about a week. “Today they were putting us together and trying outfits on us, seeing how we look as a couple,” she said to me then. “It’s always so silly; you dont know somebody and in three days you’re going to be ‘married’. But he’s lovely, Brad Pitt. He’s very sweet.”

When i asked her then about the film, she said, “It’s a study in marriage and how well you know your partner. There’s everything from couples therapy to arguing about the drapes, and you think they’re having affairs, and then you slowly discover that the reasin they’re having problems is because they have very different lives and secret with each other.” And then she said this:”My opinion of marriage comes from a very cynical place. Do you want to kill your spouse? For me, that’s a serious question. And Brad Pitt comes from a place of: What a funny idea to kill the person you;re married to, because he has a happy marriage. So we’re actually a very funny combination.”

Now it’s mid-September 2006 and we are back at the same hotel, sitting in one of the sprawling garden suites that she has reserved so that we might have a little privacy while we eat and talk. (Two-and-a-half years ago, we sat in the lobby and no one said a word to us but the waitress.) She is wearinf her uniform: A skinny black slacks with black flip-flops and a black sleeveless jersey V-neck. A pair of aviators hangs in her considerable cleavage. There are lots of silvery rings and a black rubber band around the wrist for when she needs to pull back her hair.

Santa luv Says: December 14th, 2006 at 11:52 pm

There is a glint in her eye. A big smile spreads across her face. “Let’s go scare your mother,” she says
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She’d better hide this interview from her kids when they are a little older. :lol:

malibumom Says:

December 14th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
If Brad wins no awards I love him anyway
If he Never married Angie, I love him anyway
If Brad gets fat and bald, I love him anyway
The same goes for Angie-
These are regular people who found a type of happiness most ppl on dream of-I don’t care what they do-I applaud them for having the courage to go forward in spite of their circumstances
““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

cheers to that!!

CONGRATULATIONSBRAD !!
And Angie is so sweet and wild in this vogue interview, beautiful contradiction!

Lovin this Santa Luv - thanks so much!! You are Santa Claus tonight. lolol :-)

Saundra and co, you people sound so juvenile. You don’t make intelligent conversations just ranting and evil wishes. It most be terrible to be you.

Do you know how much I LOVE that Brad told her to just be herself and do the interview as she’s always done, being herself and not having to censor herself? All those who were saying that she should not have done this interview I disagree. I love that she did it and now reading all of it, I love her more than ever. She is a firecracker and you never know what she is going to do or say next just like brad said. He will never get bored with her ever.