Angelina Jolie talks about letting Those Who Wish Me Dead director Taylor Sheridan drag her through hell
- Angelina Jolie was in the middle of her painful divorce from Brad Pitt, when she was asked to do the movie
- Director Sheridan cheerfully says the filming process was miserable, and Jolie says she loved every minute of it
Taylor Sheridan, initially brought on to rewrite the mountain thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, gradually got more invested in the movie. When another filmmaker dropped out, he called the studio with an offer.
“I said if I can get Angie to do this with me, I’ll direct it for you,” Sheridan says. “They said, ‘Great. You’ll never get Angie’.”
The scepticism on the part of Warner Bros executives was warranted. Angelina Jolie, whose priorities have centred on filmmaking, international work and family, hasn’t starred in a live-action film in six years. Over the past decade, her only leading performances have been two Maleficent movies and By the Sea, which she directed and starred in alongside then-husband Brad Pitt.
But Sheridan’s timing was right. Jolie, going through a painful and protracted divorce, was more interested in a quicker, simpler role on set. And the part of a Montanan smokejumper haunted by trauma and guilt, was potentially cathartic.
“We all have times in our lives where we are broken. And we grieve and we’re not sure we have anything left in us,” Jolie said in an interview by Zoom from Los Angeles.