TORONTO: Angelina Jolie arrives for an interview with the familiar harried air of a parent who has just barely managed to withdraw from her children, all six of whom she is left having breakfast upstairs in their Toronto hotel suite.
“The reason I was a little late is they made me change,” Jolie says, smiling. “They thought what I was wearing was too revealing.”
It is just another example of the extreme balancing act of Jolie’s life, one which combines global celebrity with humanitarian devotion, A-list stardom with sober filmmaking, glamor and family. “I actually went to a premiere once with pee on me,” she says. “It was when the kids were little and I just got peed on at the last minute. There was nothing to do but wear it.”
But Jolie’s latest film, the powerfully immersive Cambodian genocide drama “First They Killed My Father,” represents a kind of amalgamation of Jolie’s multifarious life. Her initial interest in Cambodia came when she arrived — in a much earlier life — to make “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” in 2000. She became infatuated with the country and its people, began goodwill work for the UN’s refugee agency and adopted her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia.
“First They Killed My Father,” which hits Netflix and select theaters Friday, is based on Loung Ung’s 2000 memoir. The film hues close to Ung’s perspective as a five-year-old girl living with her family in Phnom Penn when the Khmer Rouge march in, force the residents to flee and then imprison Ung’s family in a labor camp, brutally indoctrinating them to a classless society. Some 2 million (nearly a quarter of the country) died during the Khmer Rouge’s four year reign of terror.
The film is not just a shattering view of war through a child’s eyes, it is intended as a cathartic healing for Cambodia itself, and a personal journey into the past of Maddox’s countrymen. The 16-year-old, credited as an executive producer, collaborated with her mother on the production, which was shot in Cambodia with local actors, both professional and not.
“I said to my son Maddox, who is known Luong his whole life, when you are ready, we should tell Luong’s story. But we have to tell it together,” Jolie says. “We had this script for a few years and he came up to me and said, ‘I am ready.’”
Jolie’s heavily watched appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival was her most public since she filed for divorce from Brad Pitt after 12 years together — two of them married. Jolie acknowledged it is been a difficult period of transition and that her filmmaking has been put on pause. She has an acting gig lined up (“Maleficent 2”) but the yearslong work of directing has for now been tabled.
“I have needed to take over a year off just to be with my kids,” Jolie says. “All I have done is some of my humanitarian work and my teaching. I have done nothing else for over a year. Now that they are all older, the decisions really have to be made together because they home school and they will be with me and they have a lot of opinions about what to do.”
Jolie on her Cambodian epic, power of family
Jolie on her Cambodian epic, power of family
Some Warren Buffett wisdom on his last day leading Berkshire Hathaway
OMAHA, Nebraska: The advice that legendary investor Warren Buffett offered on investing and life over the years helped earn him legions of followers who eagerly read his annual letters and filled an arena in Omaha every year to listen to him at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings.
Buffett’s last day as CEO is Wednesday after six decades of building up the Berkshire conglomerate. He’ll remain chairman, but Greg Abel will take over leadership.
Here’s a collection of some of Buffett’s most famous quotes from over the years:
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“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
That’s how Buffett summed up his investing approach of buying out-of-favor stocks and companies when they were selling for less than he estimated they were worth.
He also urged investors to stick with industries they understand that fall within their “circle of competence” and offered this classic maxim: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”
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“After they first obey all rules, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children and friends with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.
“If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless.”
That’s the ethical standard Buffett explained to a Congressional committee in 1991 that he would apply as he cleaned up the Wall Street investment firm Salomon Brothers. He has reiterated the newspaper test many times since over the years.
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“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Many companies might do well when times are good and the economy is growing, but Buffett told investors that a crisis always reveals whether businesses are making sound decisions.
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“Who you associate with is just enormously important. Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that. But you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.”
Buffett always told young people that they should try to hang out with people who they feel are better than them because that will help improve their lives. He said that’s especially true when choosing a spouse, which might be the most important decision in life.
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“Our unwavering conclusion: never bet against America.”
Buffett has always remained steadfast in his belief in the American capitalist system. He wrote in 2021 that “there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America. Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking.”
