NEWSAngelina Jolie Took 'Salt' From Tom Cruise
Jul. 21 2010, Published 6:15 a.m. ET
Hey, Tom Cruise. Can you pass the Salt? While Tom was originally up for the leading role in Salt, Angelina Jolie took it over — after some convincing!
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"Well, Tom Cruise was never signed, but he was really thinking about it," Salt director Phillip Noyce told E! News. "We needed a start date, so we needed an actor. Amy Pascal, head of Sony Pictures, said 'Let's send it to Angelina.' It seemed for a moment to be an outrageous idea! Then I thought about it and realized it only had pluses."
The biggest "plus" was that Angie is all about action.
"It's true that Amy Pascal had joked to Angelina about her being a Bond Girl one day and Angelina really said, ‘No I don't want to be a Bond Girl. I want to be Bond,' Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Salt producer, told E! News. "When it didn't work out with Tom, this seemed like the movie to give her that shot. They've been talking about this notion for a while."
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Phillip had no doubts Angelina had what it takes to make the lead role work as a woman.
"She trains so hard, and she does so much preparation for stunt sequences," he said. "She is just absolutely focused, and she really knows how to make believe and how to act. You really believe that she is knocking those bad guys down with such strength!"
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And Angie loved the challenged!
"I hadn't seen a film where a woman had done... I had done a lot of action movies but none that were based in reality," Angie told E! News at the premiere of Salt on Monday. "So it was such a big challenge, people weren't sure it could be pulled off. Anytime someone questions if something can be pulled off, it's hard not to want to try."
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But no hard feelings Tom, at least you got to star in another action film, Knight & Day.
Try and take it with a grain of salt!
