Angelina Jolie leans to WW2 hero for support on Unbroken
Award-winning actress, mother, UN ambassador and the world's most beautiful woman, what else can A-lister Angelina Jolie do? Direct a film, of course.
The recent buzz is that Jolie is directing the World War 2 movie, entitled Unbroken, making it the second film she had ever directed.
The 39 year old actress admits that the movie made her feel scared and had moments of self-doubt in the success of the film. But Olympic runner, World War 2 POW and the film's subject, Louis Zamperini assured her that "it would be all right."
In an interview on Channel Nine, the A-lister admits that she had "many sleepless nights feeling 'Oh my god, I hope I can do good enough work and be worthy of this man's story, to be a keeper of this man's story". She also added that Zamperini kept on reminding her that she was doing a good job and posed as a father figure to her while she filmed the movie at Queensland and New South Wales at Australia.
The film, Unbroken is based on the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. It was written by Laura Hillenbrand and narrates Zamperini's life. He competed in the 1939 Berlin Olympics, was stuck in a raft for 47 days in WWII when he was still a bombardier and became a Japanese prisoner of war. Louis Zamperini died last July while in a coma at the age of 97.
Though the actress-turned-director was devastated that the war hero never got to see the final edit of the film, he was able to see the draft edit on her laptop as Angelina was always in contact with him, often phoning him to double check on facts even if she was already well versed with his story.
Unbroken will be released on Australia on January 15, 2015.