Few names in the film industry are as memorable in the 21st Century as Angelina Jolie. Jolie has been Hollywood’s highest-paid actress several times and has been adorned for her cinematic performances with a number of awards, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globes.
Amongst Jolie’s most notable efforts are films such as Girl, Interrupted, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Salt, Maleficent and, of course, Kung Fu-Panda. Jolie has also taken the directorial reigns on In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken and First They Killed My Father, all of which she also wrote.
In a feature with Yahoo, Jolie once revealed several films that are dear to her. She remembers the first time she saw the 1959 Disney film Sleeping Beauty and particularly its antagonist fairy Maleficent. “You just think, ‘Who is this big powerful force that seems so elegant as a woman?’” Jolie said. “She kind of had that 1930s, 1940s [look]. And even though she’s wicked, she seems to be having a very good time. I just found her kind of mesmerizing.”
With Jolie’s father, Jon Voight, also working in the film industry, Jolie was exposed to cinema at a young age. Some of the first films she remembers watching are Calamity Jane and The Fixer, but there was a lot of Al Pacino on screen in her youth too. She noted: “My mom loved Al Pacino movies, so [we watched] Dog Day Afternoon.”
It’s another Al Pacino classic, 1983’s Scarface, that Jolie finds herself quoting the most often, too, especially in her youth. “I’m sure Scarface when I was younger,” she said with a hearty laugh. “There was quite a lot of Pacino, definitely, for a period. And that will creep up again, I’m sure, whenever I’m angry”.
As for the film that made Jolie want to become an actor, she felt a kinship with adventure movies such as Lawrence of Arabia. Jolie admitted, “I liked the journey you could take, the emotional journey, but then there’s also just the real journey of going to places where you can learn about other cultures and be other people and explore life in this kind of extreme way. That was something that I wanted.”
Elsewhere, we find a wide variety of choices from Jolie. She certainly admires the work of Sidney Lumet, particularly his 1965 film The Hill, and other classics like Bridge on the River Kwai and Papillion with Steve McQueen. But as a mother, there’s also time for more children’s films such as Frozen and Despicable Me. Check out the complete list of Jolie’s favourites below.
Angelina Jolie’s favourite movies:
- Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi et al, 1959)
- Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953)
- The Fixer (John Frankenheimer, 1968)
- Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
- The Champ (Franco Zeffirelli, 1979)
- Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
- Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)
- The Hill (Sidney Lumet, 1965)
- Papillon (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1973)
- Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
- Frozen (Christopher Buck & Jennifer Lee, 2013)
- Despicable Me (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, 2010)
- Bears (Alastair Fothergill & Keith Scholey, 2014)
