{"id":1033526,"date":"2026-06-18T01:17:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T01:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1033526\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T01:17:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T01:17:22","slug":"angelina-jolie-my-fighting-spirit-is-finally-back-thanks-to-my-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1033526\/","title":{"rendered":"Angelina Jolie: ‘My Fighting Spirit Is Finally Back’ Thanks to My Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn \u201cCouture<\/a>,\u201d Angelina Jolie<\/a> plays Maxine, a low-budget horror movie director juggling a film commission from a French luxury fashion house and being a single mother in the midst of a divorce when she receives a devastating breast cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCouture\u201d writer and director Alice Winocour<\/a> says she wrote the French and English language drama with the Oscar-winner in mind.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI needed someone special, someone that would have a special connection with the story,\u201d Winocour says. \u201cAngelina has a lot in common with the character. She\u2019s also a director and she has been through this \u2014 not cancer \u2014 but everyone knows her story. So I felt like it\u2019s for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film mirrors some of Jolie\u2019s real-life experiences. While she was never diagnosed with cancer like Maxine, Jolie revealed in a New York Times op-ed that\u00a0she underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene<\/a>, which sharply increases an individual\u2019s risk for developing breast and\/or ovarian cancer. Jolie\u2019s mother was only 56 when she died from ovarian cancer. She also lost her grandmother to the disease.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAlso what I liked with Angelina was that she had this kind of punk spirit and punk energy and raw energy, and it\u2019s really what I wanted for the film,\u201d Winocour says.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m on a Zoom with Winocour and Jolie.<\/p>\n

\n\tI ask Jolie if she considers herself punk. \u201cI think I\u2019m more punk now,\u201d she says. \u201cYes, it has an energy, but it\u2019s also kind of the counter movement to a lot of what\u2019s happening. So even sometimes my privacy or not completely being sucked into a lot of things or movements \u2014 sometimes the doing less, or being private, when the world is the way it is right now, that is an opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then, Jolie hints at her private life and alludes to her messy divorce from Brad Pitt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think my fighting spirit is finally back,\u201d she says. \u201cI lost it for a bit. I got kind of taken down a little bit and it\u2019s coming back in large part thanks to my children, who are now older, and encouraging it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe further explains, \u201cMy kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me traveling the world, they want me to get out and do things. They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot. I think they\u2019re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn\u2019t felt as free to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, before splitting from Pitt, Jolie decided she was done with acting. \u201cI had kind of quit acting before my divorce,\u201d she says. \u201cI was focusing on directing, and I thought I\u2019d be doing my international work. But then suddenly the only way to be home more and for short periods of time being away or to make a good amount of money, was to go back to acting. I was only taking things that were short or close by or I could take [my children].\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAlice Winocour and Angelina Jolie attend a special screening of \u201cCouture\u201d at The Whitby Hotel on June 16 in New York City.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images for Vertical<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCouture\u201d is very much an ensemble co-starring\u00a0Ella Rumpf as a makeup artist and aspiring writer, and South Sudanese model Anyier Anei as a new model who travels to Paris for the first time and is the star of Maxine\u2019s fashion film. All three women find themselves meeting each other at pivotal and very vulnerable times in their lives. \u201cWe are stronger together,\u201d Winocour says. \u201cThe film is about also the solidarity and that woman who bare scars, sometimes you tell you the most personal thing you have to a stranger \u2026 What we wanted to show was this fragile moment between human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original title of the film was \u201cRide or Die,\u201d Winocour says. \u201cIt\u2019s about the spirit of survival,\u201d she says. \u201cThe world is so difficult. It\u2019s like, let\u2019s celebrate life together. We see all the wounds behind the perfect images, but it\u2019s all those people who are connecting to each other and sharing things together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one scene, a doctor outlines Maxine\u2019s incision lines with red ink on her bare chest ahead of undergoing a double mastectomy. Jolie said Vincent Lindon, who plays the physician, was so convincing she felt as if he was with a real doctor: \u201cAs a patient, as a woman, I wanted to lean on him and ask him, \u2018Am I going to be OK?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scene brought back memories of her own health journey. \u201cIt\u2019s very sobering in realizing \u2013 like the [doctor] says in the film \u2014 we\u2019re all going to die, we\u2019re all not here forever,\u201d Jolie says. \u201cI think having lost my mom young and never met my grandmother, I have never lived feeling like I\u2019m going to have a long life. I\u2019m already past the age when my mother was diagnosed. I may struggle from almost feeling like I can\u2019t live in the moment because I feel like I have to push and rush because time\u2019s running out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continues, \u201cI raise my kids almost preparing them for my absence and not as much preparing to be a grandmother,\u201d she continues. \u201cThat\u2019s what happens when you consider death as a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCouture\u201d is in theaters June 26.<\/p>\n

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