On a bright afternoon in Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard is crammed with tourists jostling for a glimpse of a celebrity - any celebrity - as black cars pull up to the premiere of Will Ferrell's Blades Of Glory. If only they knew that at this very moment, the starriest of them all is in a hotel nearby. The lobby is dark and quiet, the restaurant empty. A booth at the back has been prepared with two place settings. I've done this with Angelina Jolie before, so I know enough to take the seat that faces the room. She'll be down in a moment, I'm told.

Soon, Jolie's striding across the floor with "that face" proffering a cordial hello. There's no mistaking her world-class allure. The dark jacket she's wearing over a sleeveless blouse and pants mutes her curves; my initial impression is that she seems both thinner and livelier than the last time we met two years ago.
The actress slides into the booth. The photographs that serve her up as a haughty vamp do not capture her conviviality one on one; warmth and good humour aren't qualities typically ascribed to Hollywood's archangel of passionate crusades.

Judging from her choice of roles (riveting train wrecks in both Girl, Interrupted and Gia; tomb-raiding ass kicker in the Lara Croft films) to her well-chronicled, off-screen adventures (challenging world leaders on humanitarian issues; piloting her own plane; giving birth to daughter Shiloh in Namibia), Jolie's a heedless daredevil. In reality, however, she's a meticulous planner. "Brad always makes fun of me because I do that," she reveals. "I prepare for everything to go completely wrong. I don't want anything to take me by surprise."

The steady, detail-oriented side of Jolie's nature was in evidence when she recently embarked on a powerful, personal project. In A Mighty Heart, she stars as Mariane Pearl, the wife of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose beheading by al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan in 2002 was recorded on video. The movie is based on Mariane's memoir of the same name.

To prepare for the role, the actress spent long stretches with Mariane. "She doesn't speak as a normal person would about 'my life, my problems, my issues'. Mariane speaks about 'us, we, hate, love' - very open, collective feelings," explains Jolie, who became fast friends with the Pearl family. Jolie also hopes the movie breathes with the romance that transformed the Pearls. "They had a deep, deep love; an amazing partnership. I think the way she handled the situation was exactly as Danny would have wished. If he had seen it, it would have made him very proud," she adds.


Read more about Angelina's latest film, her humanitarian work and her "chaotic" home life with Brad Pitt and their four children in the September issue of marie claire.