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COVER STORY<br />
Having done three animated movies including<br />
the tigress in Kung Fu Panda, what made you<br />
pursue Maleficent?<br />
I hadn’t done anything like Maleficent and even<br />
though I’m trained in a little bit of theater, I’ve<br />
never been confident about being on stage. I’m<br />
very much a film actor, I think, where it’s more<br />
internal. I’m always in awe when I go to the<br />
theater. I love watching the actors and when I<br />
knew I was going to do this role, I thought I<br />
must train. I’m not good enough. I’m not<br />
actually ready for this.<br />
What made you cross paths and become a<br />
movie director?<br />
I am one of those actors that was always aware<br />
of it simply because I believe strongly that it’s<br />
about how we contribute to the whole movie<br />
process. We have a responsibility and however<br />
small or big our role is or if we’re supposed to<br />
be the antagonist or whatever it is that we are,<br />
we’re feeding what everybody else needs, so I<br />
tried to stay very aware of that. I like working<br />
with crews and care about what everybody’s job<br />
is. I never thought I could make a movie or that<br />
I could write. It never was my plan.<br />
What changed?<br />
Well, it was kind of an accident. This sounds so<br />
strange. Every time I say this, I know it sounds<br />
strange. I wanted to learn to become a director.<br />
I wanted to learn more about the war in<br />
Yugoslavia because when I was a teenager I felt<br />
I didn’t understand enough. It was a war I really<br />
couldn’t get my head around. I wasn’t planning<br />
on making a movie at all. I was sick for a few<br />
days. I was away from my kids and I thought I’ll<br />
try to write a screenplay for fun, for me. Nobody<br />
will ever see it and I’m going to just start with<br />
two people that love each other deeply and I’m<br />
going to end with one of them killing the other<br />
and somehow figuring out how they get from<br />
here to there in the study of it, and what I’m<br />
going to have to discover about what happened.<br />
I’m going to learn something that’s going to<br />
help me to come to terms with it. It can help me<br />
with my work. I’m going to explore this. I would<br />
travel and meet amazing people, learn from<br />
them, talk. I’ve met many women who were<br />
victims of sexual assaults, and so the (first) film<br />
(as a director) grew from there. I gave myself an<br />
excuse, a homework to study something.<br />
Somebody who saw the script said it wasn’t that<br />
bad, and then suddenly very quickly, it turned<br />
into I could make it. That was ‘In the Land of<br />
Blood and Honey’, my first film as a director.<br />
30<br />
EQUITY
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