Maleficent, who is a strong, powerful female character, may have had Angelina written all over it when she filmed the first movie in 2014, but it’s been four years since her last acting role and a lot has changed in her personal life since then.
“It was a tough time,” Angelina said of her return to playing Maleficent in an interview with People. “I’d been coming off a few years of difficulty, and I was not feeling very strong. In fact, I was feeling pretty broken. It took me a moment to feel the strength of [Maleficent] again.”
Luckily for Angelina, her kids are what gives her strength, and she had all six of them in London with her during filming. However, she wasn’t able to convince any of them to appear on screen this time around.
For the first Maleficent film, Angelina’s daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt played the role of five-year-old Aurora alongside her mum. But this time around, she wasn’t interested.
“I tried,” Angelina told People. “Viv still can’t believe I made her a princess. None of my kids want to be actors. [They’re into] business, humanitarian affairs, things like that. Nobody was interested!”
