By Tim Nasson
Beverly Hills – The last time I spoke with Angelina Jolie it was halfway through her filming of the movie Girl, Interrupted. She was in LA promoting last year’s bomb Pushing Tin; however, the buzz was already in motion for her role as the teen committed to an insane asylum, and the word was that she was going to win a lot of awards for Girl. Nine months have passed since I last spoke with Jolie, and now, not only is she to be seen in Girl, Interrupted, she has just come off a huge summer blockbuster opposite Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector.
Winner of a Golden Globe Award for her work in Interrupted, Jolie, already a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actress (from the HBO film Gia), is poised to win her first Academy Award nomination.
Walking into a suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills recently (before she won any awards), Jolie carried a half-eaten bag of Peanut M&Ms. Nothing quite extraordinary; however, this was at 9 a.m. Not the most obvious of choices for a breakfast for the stunning modelesque beauty. A package of M&Ms, instead of a selection from the food (fruit, bagels, muffins) overflowing from tables in a room nearby.
“Peanut M&Ms are my favorite food,” she says when I ask her why she is munching on them at such an early hour.
Stunned by the success of The Bone Collector, Jolie is taking all of the accolades she is getting for Girl in stride. “I was extremely pleased yet surprised with the success of Gia,” says Jolie, “but I never expected to star in a movie that made so much money [Bone Collector] at the box office.”
On the brink
While Jolie may be excited about her sudden rise to fame in Hollywood, it is Winona Ryder who plays the title role in Girl, Interrupted. Ryder says she’s happy to have been chosen to portray Cambridge, Massachusetts resident Susanna Kaysen, whose autobiography forms the basis of the film.
Debuting on the big screen 14 years ago in Lucas, Ryder struck it big a year later in the cult classic Heathers. She then went on to star in numerous hits, critical and box office, including Edward Scissorhands, Little Women, Mermaids, and Beetlejuice.
Having been nominated twice for an Academy Award, she, too, is on the brink of a nomination for her work in Girl, Interrupted.
“I read the book seven years ago,” says Ryder later that morning, at the same hotel. “And I instantly fell in love with it. It was brutally honest, without being self-indulgent.”
The 1993 Girl, Interrupted was Susanna Kaysen’s third book, but Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted her first foray into nonfiction. Her honest account of the two years she spent in McLean’s Hospital during the late ’60s sent the book skyrocketing up The New York Times (and every other) bestseller list for
months. Producers fought over the screenplay rights in Hollywood.
“I write in my own journal everyday, so I could relate to Susanna a lot,” says Ryder. That’s not the only thing that Ryder has in common with Kaysen. “I also spent a couple of weeks in a psychiatric hospital when I was 19. I needed time to collect my thoughts and just take a break from the world.”
That is about as far as Ryder would go explaining why she decided to check herself into a mental hospital. She was not even comfortable talking about her meetings with Kaysen. “They were so personal,” she says, “that I would like to keep what we talked about together private.”
All the talk of an Academy Award for her role in Girl kind of scares Ryder. “Look at all of the younger women who win Academy Awards. A lot of them never make another movie again, or if they do, they are not very successful,” she points out. “If I win an Academy Award, I hope it will be many years down the road, when I am a lot older. That way, if I never get another great role again, it won’t matter.”
Though not a girl in the spotlight, other than when in a huge movie, Ryder has had her share of Hollywood heartthrobs. In the past she has gone out with Johnny Depp; however, at the moment, her s.o. is none other than the talented Mr. Matt Damon. Ryder makes her home not in LA, but San Francisco. “It’s such a beautiful city!”
If Angelina Jolie gets her way, she will be moving to an island in Canada and into a deserted castle.
“I love my privacy, but at the same time, I love to be around people that I am close to. So if I get this castle, which is not as expensive as you would think, I will be alone and secluded, yet have the ability to invite tons of friends over.”
With that, and a few scribbles from a marker onto a glossy black- and-white photo of her from Girl, Jolie gets up, picks up her full-length leather coat and ventures towards her next interview. “You forgot your M&Ms,” I shout out as she is about to leave the suite.
“Thank god you reminded me,” she says. “I’d be lost without them.”
Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder talk Girl, Interrupted to Tim Nasson.
