Midnight Celebrity: Angelina Jolie lost sleep when filming ‘A Mighty Heart’

Angelina Jolie became teary-eyed while discussing the latest film role to win her a Golden Globe award nomination.

The actress has been nominated for her portrayal of journalist Mariane Pearl in the film A Mighty Heart.

Pearl is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journalist killed by Islamic extremists in Pakistan in 2002.

But she is also mother of the playmate of Jolie's son, Maddox. And it is this little boy - five-year-old Adam Pearl - who brought tears to her eyes.

The actress said: "All I could think about was I have this one opportunity to show this little boy how much his mother loves his father."

Jolie, 32, had the emotional moment during an interview with The Envelope, part of the LA Times newspaper.

Pushing aside suggestions that she was upset that the movie - released last summer - was a commercial flop, she explained how much pressure she felt portraying Pearl, her real-life friend.

She says: "It was the one film I've done where I'd lost sleep and I didn't think I could do it."

Pearl, 40, and Jolie became friends a few years before the actress started dating actor Brad Pitt, whose production company Plan B Entertainment brought the project to the big screen.

The movie is based on Pearl's 2003 memoir, A Mighty Heart, in which she charts the emotional days surrounding her husband's kidnapping while she was heavily pregnant with their child.

The story was told against the backdrop of the couple's romance. But, although she thoroughly researched the role, Jolie says there were questions she couldn't ask her friend, despite their closeness.

She says: "There are certain things I never asked her [Pearl].

"I never asked her - and I never would ask her - about the tape [of Daniel's beheading].

"I never have asked her to describe how she responded. I just tried to understand what the loss was and then tried to interpret it from what I understood that was."

Ironically, Jolie filmed the movie in Pakistan shortly after giving birth to daughter Shiloh her first biological child.

She lost her mother Marcheline Bertrand to ovarian cancer around the same time period. Jolie said that Pearl's loss - and courage thereafter - helped her during filming through such a difficult time.

She says: "My thought was: 'My God, [Mariane] went through such unbelievable horror. I can certainly get myself in gear and pretend on a movie set'.

"She knows as a journalist, as a Buddhist, as a very strong woman and a mother that to let something eat you up inside doesn't solve the problem.

"Her kind of medicine seems to be her advocacy

"As much as she had people around her, she's an individual survivor."

Jolie heartily admits, however, that she has a partner willing to shoulder the responsibilities that she has as a parent of four children - sons Maddox, six and Pax, four, and daughters Zahara, three and Shiloh, one.

"I have a great partner in it," she says of her lover Pitt, 44.

"I think you need at least to look at that other person and share the lack of sleep and insanity.

"And then it becomes more fun."

By Owen Williams, Jan 10 2008 © Copyright 2008 - Showbiz Spy

Category Angelina Jolie, Showbiz Gossip

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