Jolie Downplays Sexuality in Salt

KOMPAS.com - The role of Evelyn Salt was originally written for a man, with Tom Cruise the likely contender. Angelina Jolie says her turn as CIA officer Evelyn Salt in the upcoming movie Salt is one of the most unglamorous roles she has ever taken on.

She said: “Females in those films rely on being female but we wanted to ignore that – she’s just Salt. “She doesn’t use her sexuality to get anything. In fact, in many ways it’s the roughest I’ve looked because when you fight it gets ugly and if someone breaks your nose it’s not pretty.”

The part of Evelyn Salt came about as a result of a script change – the role was originally meant to be played by a man, namely Tom Cruise.

“We discussed the film with Tom,” said director Phillip Noyce in Total Film magazine.

“His main fears were that the character was too close to Ethan Hunt, being a rogue spy, with extraordinary abilities.”

Jolie admits it was tough to adapt the screenplay to have a woman as the lead character. She told Total Film: “It was much harder than we thought to switch it from a male to a female because the challenges and surprises or how a man would react to a certain situation are not necessarily the same when it’s a woman.

“For example, the original character was married and he had a child and part of the discovery at the end was that he would find love. But for a woman the discovery of love is not a deep surprise.