The New York Times did a fantastic job in this profile of Angelina Jolie’s masterful media manipulation — an article that is subtly scathing in its neutrality. The writer, Brooks Barnes, scored anonymous interviews with magazine insiders to learn exactly why Angelina Jolie is so revered in spite of plenty of less-than-saintly behavior. And she doesn’t even have a publicist.
The portrait examines her ability to portray herself how she feels will best serve her image at any given time, whether that means buying positive coverage with promises of exclusive quotes and photo deals, or emphasizing her charity work at a time when a lot of media outlets were tempted to brand her a homewrecker.
An early example of her skillfulness:
[S]he cut a very different, wilder figure in Hollywood during her marriage to the actor Billy Bob Thornton. After their divorce in 2003, Us magazine asked Ms. Jolie if she would agree to an interview and be photographed. According to two people involved, she declined — but then offered the magazine another photo opportunity. Ms. Jolie informed it what time and place she would be publicly playing with Maddox, essentially creating a paparazzi shot.
The resulting photo, the origin of which was not made public to Us readers, presented Ms. Jolie in a new light — a young mother unsuccessfully trying to have a private moment with her son.
And thus, Saint Angelina was born. You have to give her some credit for being able to work the press better than any other actress out there today. (Britney Spears could only hope for this talent.) But it does make you wonder whether we know the first thing about her, other than that she has razor-sharp survival instincts.
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When she loses her looks and the movie deals fail to come in then the magical reins she has on the MSM will turn back upon its rider.
Elizabeth Taylor used to have this same effect on the media. The moment she dropped out of the lime light and secluded herself she was fair game and they continue to take pot shots at her to this day.
Come on, are you suprised? This from the woman who claims she could never date a man who was in another relationship. Because that would be do close to what her father did to her mother. She didn’t do this once, she did it twice.
I guess it is okay to be a skeeze if you adopt lots of babies from foreign countries.
Of course she does this. So do a lot of other celebrities. And, frankly she has to because the only thing she has going for her is her boobs and the underlying kinkiness of her behavior. A great actress she isn’t. And, on that note, cue the Brangeloonies.
I have to say, she know how to promote herself. She’s by herself a publicity industry that sells movies. Of course she will play with her image.
We just need to understand that EVERYTHING coming out of the media is fabricated and biassed. Angelina Jolie is not an exception.
Bigmama,
I am so glad you said you didn’t think Jolie was a good actress. Everytime I say that people question my sanity. Glad to see there is another believer out there.
Toubrouk- I think you nailed the issue here, truly…everybody in media is into fabrication, but people forget that with Brangelina. Her gift is not the gift of spin so much as making tons of loonies online screamingly DEFEND her saintly image. That is rare pull indeed.
Yeah, Lisa, I was waiting for the screaming maniacs “You just don’t understand her genius.” “She’s such a great person.” and on and on. But, no screeching loonies. Not one.
I’ve long since figured that while Angelina might be sincere in her charitable efforts and her Mia Farrow-esque love of motherhood, she was no dummy in recognizing they would burnish up her public image and take the heat off of her weird/off-putting personal life or her weird/off-putting roles. Before all of that, she was a homewrecking, freaky-deaky (remember her bi phase?), family-estranged, drug-ingesting, slutty cutter. Prior to little Maddox, she was known as the chick who wore a vial of blood around her neck and kissed her brother after winning an Oscar. Now she’s the Audrey Hepburn of our time. Smart cookie.
That’s not Angelina Jolie. There’s only 3 kids in that painting. We all know Miss Jolie can field her own football team.
Frankly, I’m suprised that when she bought them off, the media were were the ones forking over the cash.
I’d like to go get groceries and have the store pay me.
What really strikes fear into my heart is that eventually we’ll see a politician who is this media savvy.
Oh wait, we just did.
Anyone in the business, talented or not, has my respect if they have that much power to manipulate the media. All this tells me is that Angelina Jolie is smarter than the average celebrity. After all, if I were in her position, I would rather do what she’s doing than say…what Britney’s done.
How much did Obama pay for similar treatment from almost ALL the press? Or was it Soros who paid?
@ Bruce: C’mon, Soros couldn’t have paid! Don’t you know *all* ultra-rich people are evil conservatives?? Georgie would never, ever fund stuff like the Center for American Progress or MoveOn.org, and certainly not buy off the media for Obama. He was just kidding when he said his life goal was removing Bush from office. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also live, breathe, and sleep conservativeism, so I’m sure they wouldn’t be involved…
You people really are cynical. You believe everything you read, as long as it’s negative. It was an article backed up by ‘anonymous sources’…that’s no better than the national enquirer. If I was famous, I’d manipulate the media as much as I could to draw attention to important issues..and no, I’m not a screaming ‘brangeloonie’. Really nice nmae for people who happen to disagree with you and don’t have coal black hearts.
Maybe she has just grown up. Im not sticking up for but, people do change.
“Coal black hearts”? Now you’re talkin’!
I think this just proves she’s a smart cookie. What? She’d be better off playing the victim? That’s not her job. That’s Jennifer Aniston’s job.
Took 17 posts, but someone brought up Jennifer Aniston. This chick’s ‘fans’ (I use the word loosely, as ‘followers’ would likely be a better description) argue the same points over and over so often I begin to wonder if it’s the same 3 people on every site on the web. More likely, there really are thousands, they’re just all sharing the same brain.
You don’t have to be a fan of Angelina, or a fan of Jennifer Aniston to question the logic of the nyt Brooks Barnes piece. It’s badly written. There’s no gotcha in this so-called gotcha. Oooooh, Angelina Jolie is a baaaaaad person because….um…because…she made People magazine say ‘nice,’ things about her…
People being the eviscerating vitriolic nasty celebrity hating weekly it is, I suppose??
Yeah, okay.
That guy is a hack. He did the same wack job on the Writer’s strike last year. This only embarrasses the times. It makes Angelina out to be the smartest person in Hollywood for doing herself what most dummies pay CAA 15% of their income for.
If you can explain to me, how in the midst of a divorce (after Jolie had adopted a baby that some said at the time was the catalyst that broke up the marriage), her refusing an interview but granting a photo opportunity makes her the devil?
The writer says the pictures painted her as a “young mother unsuccessfully trying to have a private moment with her child.” But um, wouldn’t she be THAT, every single OTHER time she walked out the door with Maddox and didn’t ’set-up’ a shot?? LOL
Am I the smartest person on this board, or just not a hater.
Please tell me. Cuz I don’t get it.
I know the pictures that he’s referring to, Jolie doesn’t look stressed or as if she’s ‘unsuccessfully trying to have a private moment,’ she looks happy and is playing in the park with her kid. Perhaps that was her capitulation to the magazine, in exchange for being browbeaten about doing an interview on why she adopted a child that broke up the most eccentric marriage in Hollywood, as people like to say.
How does that help her image exactly? What am I missing?
What if Jolie had simply exited her building on the way to the grocery, and not given a photog time to take pics? Or what if she had just gone to a park, and waved a papz down…would he/she/they have NOT taken the pics? Everyone knows they would have. It would have then appeared somewhere, probably multiple places. If Barnes wants to argue she curried favor, why doesn’t he SHOW it with the lovely sugary fluff piece that followed.
Maybe because it didn’t?
Did the accompanying story paint her as the injured party? Well, we don’t know, Barnes doesn’t even tell us that, hell he doesn’t even tell us if there WAS an accompanying story.
Since US weekly goes after Jolie every week, and since they probably dredged up the same stuff most people do when discussing Jolie, ‘brother kissing, blood vial wearing, bi-fling, blah-blah snore,’ how EXACTLY is Angelina determining coverage? US Weekly got several shots of the Jolie and her kids before publicizing the ‘Twisted Double Life,’ hit piece they did. So again.
There’s no there there. Angelina, seems to have managed to do one thing — and one thing only re-route millions that would go to American Media Inc to she and Brad’s foundation, and to get People magazine to not say horrid things along with the cutesy pics, as they are wont to do, because, um, I guess it would serve their interest to piss-off their best selling subjects in the history of Hollywood I suppose??
kelli
Nov 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 am
Maybe she has just grown up. Im not sticking up for but, people do change.
________________________
Yeah, that’s the conclusion most objective sane people come to. But alas, we’re getting fewer and fewer these days. That was a hastily put together piece. You almost get that it was in response to something else. Deflect, deflect, deflect – the first, second, and third rules of good PR. Since Jolie doesn’t have PR, I’ll leave you to guess who the culprit is.
There’s an irony though, in how someone wants to desperately attach to Jolie what they spend their days and nights in meetings about for their client.
Or do you REALLY just think it was ‘happenstance,’ seeing Aniston straddling Vaughn on a hotel balcony, or the enumerable PUBLIC swimming pool pics of she and John Mayer, coincidentaally setting up a big ‘reveal,’ just as Cannes commenced.
Shyeah, okay Einstein.
It’s odd how you can have someone like Robert Downey Jr., who seemed on the road to his own drug related early demise in his mid thirties, arrested enumerable times, breaking in homes and passing out on children’s beds, get to leave all that behind….
You can also have Julia Roberts and her ‘A-low Vera,’ T-shirt and her then married cameraman.
…while Angelina, wears a flower press with a drop of blood in it from her husband, that she told you about – and she must be punished for all time?
Yup, Brad Pitt is the determining factor, as to what kind of coverage is meted out…this is just team sports for feral catty females and vicious misogynistic gay men (lol). They could all swear on a stack of bibles that no one cheated (instead of just saying it), Brad can tell you the end of his marriage was nie long before Jolie (as he has), and Jolie, simply for existing, and being what some think is
Thepointis, I totally agree with you, but you’re not the only smart person here, because I pointed that out too. There is something very wrong with the mentality of this site, they are too eager to hate someone, so they’ll accept almost anything as ‘hypocrisy’.
“People being the eviscerating vitriolic nasty celebrity hating weekly it is, I suppose??”
I would love to see a magazine like that. “Deceiver Magazine”? “Deceiver TV”? See? What an idea. Oh but no one listens to me. Is it because of that thing? You know from before? That girl in the place, with the belt?
**SOB!!!!!**
EVERYONE BELIEVES THE SHERIFF AND NOT ME!!!!!!!!!!