Angelina Jolie: I turned down part of James Bond girl before Salt (new trailer)

Angelina Jolie turned down an offer to be a James Bond girl before
she accepted the role of a super-spy in Salt. (Photos/Warner Bros)

Angelina Jolie would rather be a spy than play the girlfriend of one.

In the August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair, Angelina reveals that she was once offered the part of a Bond girl (in the James Bond series) but turned it down because she wanted to play a super-spy--not be the arm candy of one.

'I DIDN'T WANT TO BE A BOND GIRL'

“It started with a call from Amy [Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures]," Angelina, 35, recounts. "She asked if I wanted to play a Bond girl."

She recalls: "I said, ‘No, I’m not comfortable with that, but I would like to play Bond.’ We laughed, and then, about a year later, she called back and said, ‘I think I found it.’”

When Salt came along, Angelina jumped at the chance, even though at the time she had just given birth to twins Knox and Vivienne, now 2.

"I was sitting in my nightgown in bed feeling very very girly and very soft," Jolie recalled of reading the Salt script.

She recounted: "I sat with [the script] on the bed. I said [to boyfriend Brad Pitt], 'I think I found something that will help me get kind of fired up again and physical again.'"

'SALT' WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR  A MALE LEAD

Interestingly, Angelina was not the first choice to play the lead in Salt, a thriller about a CIA agent who's accused of being a Russian sleeper spy. Tom Cruise had initially signed on to play the role, but dropped out at the last minute.

Producers and screenwriters then rushed to adjust the part for Jolie, since it was originally written for a man. The mother of six brought her experience as a woman and a mom into the evolution of the character, which was originally called Edwin Salt.

“You think it would be easy [to change the part]," she says. "You just flip the [main] character from Edwin to Edwina. But it was a lot trickier than we thought."

Jolie continues: "For example, the male character had a child, and he knows he’ll be in danger much of the time. And we realized that, as a woman, if you knew your life was at risk, you’d never have a child."

'I HAD TO ACT TOUGHER BECAUSE I'M SMALLER THAN THE MEN'

The slender Angelina also had to modify the character's demeanor to convincingly play a tough, gun-slinging spy. "The physicality had to change too," she says. "I’m smaller than everybody, so how do I go up against a bunch of men without looking silly? How do I fight?"

She adds: "We made her meaner than a guy, and dirty. She uses the walls, the fact that she’s lighter and can throw herself around. It’s the Chihuahua up against the big dogs.”

Jolie, who was recently in Cancun to promote Salt, will continue doing press junkets before the film opens. Salt, which is directed by Phillip Noyce and co-stars Liev Schreiber, hits theaters July 23.

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