Devilish Angelina

Joshua Mooney

Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2000 | 9:52 a.m.

LOS ANGELES -- In 1993, Susanna Kaysen published "Girl, Interrupted," her memoir of two harrowing years spent in a mental hospital as a teenager in the 1960s. The book was an instant best-seller, the kind of story that inevitably attracts the attention of Hollywood. Sure enough, soon after the book's publication, it was being turned into a feature film.

Early on in the project, two-time Oscar nominee and all-around Hollywood star Winona Ryder was cast in the lead role of Susanna. And there was little doubt that this film would be another notable accomplishment for the talented actress. But there is another young woman in "Girl, Interrupted" who is crucial to the story -- and this became one of the most sought-after roles in recent Hollywood history.

Lisa, a charming, deeply tragic sociopath, is Susanna's friend and companion during her time in the hospital. She, as much as Susanna, is the focal point of the film. And, while almost every young actress was at one time interested in the part, it eventually went to Angelina Jolie, a 24-year-old who's on the cusp of genuine Hollywood stardom. In "Girl, Interrupted" she gives a performance that recalls Jack Nicholson's riveting take on Randall P. McMurphy in the classic mental hospital film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

James Mangold, who directed and co-scripted "Girl, Interrupted," says he wrote the part of Lisa as a "fantasy," never really believing that he'd find an actress skilled enough to embody her fully. "Lisa was this kind of walk-through-walls character," Mangold says. "This seductive, dangerous, highly verbal kind of genius. I had no idea who was gonna play her. It was like one of those outlines in a coloring book, and you had no idea who was gonna step in and fill this thing out."

Enter Jolie, who has already won two Golden Globes for playing complex, real-life women on the small screen. She played Gov. George Wallace's wife Cornelia in the cable television film "Wallace," and achieved her first bit of notoriety at age 21 in HBO's "Gia," playing Gia Garangi, a supermodel who died of AIDS.

Jolie, trying out for another tragic figure, made an instant impression on Mangold. "She came in for a script reading," he says, "and she was supposed to read two scenes and split. And she literally read every scene Lisa had in the screenplay all the way to the end. I was exhausted afterwards, but I also knew that she was gonna be Lisa. And not only that: it was the first moment where I felt like I actually had a movie."

Jolie, who has also made an impression with her roles in "Pushing Tin" and "Playing By Heart," acknowledges that, more than many of her Hollywood peers, she seems compelled to take chances with roles. "Thank God that's what nourishes me, to let it out and to be really honest," she says.

"Angelina is charming, sexy, dangerous and courageous," according to the film's producer Cathy Konrad. "You can't take your eyes off her."

The character of Lisa requires precisely that kind of charisma, and Jolie doesn't let the film down. Although America in the late 1960s labeled Lisa as mentally unsound, Jolie has her own interpretation of this so-called sociopath. "She's a completely normal person who follows her instincts and impulses to the nth degree. The problem is, she doesn't have that internal switch to tell her what's moral or rational."

Could she identify with the character? "I remember being very upset to discover I wasn't insane," Jolie responds. "Because, you know, there's something romantic about that when you're young. I just found that I wanted to be on-stage and be somebody else."

Jolie's passion for acting comes from her father, Jon Voight, the Oscar-winning actor who starred in films such as "Midnight Cowboy" and "Deliverance." Jolie's mother is former actress Marchline Bertrand, who gave up her career early on to raise her kids and who was divorced from Voight when Jolie was very young.

Much has been made about Jolie's purportedly contentious relationship with her dad. But the actress says that, in fact, their relationship "was only different because he wasn't like a dad -- he was like this man I knew, and he was a complicated man. He always meant well, and I always wanted to like him."

Jolie admits that she and her father have battled in the past. "We would attack each other because we both thought we were right," she says. "We'd debate anything. But I loved that. I am who I am because I question everything. I admire him. He's driven."

Jolie has had a much easier, more consistent relationship with her mother, who has been involved in the management of her career. Both parents, she adds with a laugh, were "such actors. They were very outspoken with me."

After leaving home at age 16 to begin her professional career, Jolie developed a reputation as a Hollywood rebel. At least she was portrayed as such in the media. "Well whose fault is that?" she demands with another laugh. But she herself has contributed to that image, having been linked to various actors and actresses in her private life, and becoming known as extremely outspoken on film sets. "There's a part of me that's, like, 'Sure, everybody's gotta rebel against something,' " Jolie says good-naturedly. Rebelling, she explains, is simply a way to guarantee you will accomplish something. "Or else what are we doing here?"

"Unfiltered" is the way one of Jolie's "Girl, Interrupted" producers describes the actress, and that's an apt description of Lisa, the character she plays with such passion. Some of Jolie's' most intense scenes in "Girl, Interrupted" came from a place she didn't even know existed within herself. "I did things," she says, "and I got pretty scared and couldn't believe I'd done them. It was that side of me that got really angry -- I didn't even know that was in me."

It is inevitable, perhaps, that Jolie will become fused in the minds of some with her performance in this film. For her part, Jolie isn't denying the similarities. "I understand Lisa," she says quietly. "She's me -- without all the other sides of me."