Angelina Jolie On Daughter Vivienne’s ‘Maleficent’ Cameo: Brad Pitt And I Don’t Want Our Kids To Become Actors
Angelina Jolie’s youngest daughter Vivienne is making her big screen debut in mum’s upcoming film “Maleficent,” but don’t expect her to star in other films from now on. The Hollywood A-lister revealed that she and fiancé Brad Pitt don’t want their children to become actors.
Vivienne, 5, has a cameo in the dark fantasy film, playing the younger version of Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning). However, as Angie said, her daughter’s casting was done out of necessity. And that if it’s up to her and Brad, they wouldn’t let their children act.
“We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and I at all,” she told Entertainment Weekly in an exclusive interview.
“But the other 3- and 4-year-old [performers] wouldn’t come near me. It had to be a child that liked me and wasn’t afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be Viv.”
Angelina does indeed look scary in the film. Playing the titular character, she sports Maleficent’s iconic horns and has her face contoured to make her look wicked.
All her six children – Maddox (12), Pax (10), Zahara (9), Shiloh (7), and twins Knox and Vivienne (5) – didn’t even want her to play the role, thinking that Maleficent is “so scary!”
“I said, ‘Let me tell you the real story, but you can’t tell anybody,’” she told her brood. “So this was my test, too, like any parent. The next day, I heard Shiloh getting into a fight with another kid, defending Maleficent, saying, ‘You don’t understand her!’ They got into a bit of an argument and I thought that’s the reason to do the film.”
Pax, who, along with Zahara, also appeared as an extra in the film (they have cameos in the christening scene where Maleficent puts the sleeping curse on the baby princess), was initially terrified of her mum in her Maleficent costume so Angie had to comfort him.
“When Pax saw me for the first time, he ran away and got upset – and I thought he was kidding, so I was pretending to chase him until I actually found him crying. I had to take off pieces [of the makeup] in front of him to show him it was all fake and not freak out so much.”
Viv, Pax, and Zahara aren’t the only Jolie-Pitts who have appeared alongside their parents in films. Maddox also played a zombie in dad Brad’s “World War Z,” while Shiloh had a cameo also in their dad’s Grammy Award-winning film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
“Maleficent” tells the story of the eponymous Disney villainess, who is the wicked fairy godmother of Sleeping Beauty. Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley, and Brenton Thwaites join Angie and Elle in the film.
It is set to be released on May 30 in the U.S.