Angelina Jolie still wants to play a villain, because Maleficent wasn't one

Angelina Jolie still wants “to play a villain,” she says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. You’d think in her many years in the biz, she’d have played a baddie by now, but none that meet Jolie’s standards. Even Maleficent was actually “a good guy,” the actor points out. “My villains end up being good guys. I suppose every villain is usually just someone in pain.”

Maleficent does indeed fall into a particular niche of Disney’s live action strategy that actually brings something new to the source material, except the “something new” is giving new context and redeeming female villains. (See also: Cruella.) So, it’s not exactly a chance to embrace the dark side, but Disney fare would suit Jolie just fine at the moment, too. “To be honest, it would be nice to just do something maybe a little lighter. So my children can hear me laugh a little more,” she tells THR. “As an artist, there’s a part of me that thinks I would like to find a way to do something that would make people smile.”

The Oscar winner, who just opened Pablo Larraín’s new film Maria at the Venice Film Festival, is “hoping to be able to have a new relationship with” being an artist. She started her career “early to just help my mom pay bills,” but blossomed into a filmmaker in her own right. “There are some bigger directing projects that would take longer that I haven’t been able to do,” she says. “The one sitting at my desk now, a big epic that’s on my mind, the wonderful story of [British photojournalist] Don McCullin. In many ways, it’s about the rise and fall of journalism.” McCullin has become a friend, but she’s hoping to be able to “trace his steps” before starting the project: “I’m a terrible student. If I have to just read something, I don’t get it at all. But if I experience it or meet somebody and it’s personal, then I understand.”