Angelina Jolie says she is Unbroken star Jack O'Connell's biggest fan

Angelina Jolie said she is in awe of impressive actor Jack O'Connell
Premiere: Jack O’Connell with director Angelina Jolie at the Odeon Leicester Square (Picture: Anthony Harvey/Getty Images)
Anthony Harvey/Getty Images
Tom Teodorczuk4 December 2014
The Weekender

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Angelina Jolie has lavished praise on Jack O’Connell, the English star of her new Second World War drama Unbroken.

Speaking to the Standard at a lunch for the movie at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Hotel, Jolie said: “You should be proud of him in London. It would be hard for you to find more of a fan of Jack than myself. I am in awe of him — he’s an extremely impressive actor.”

O’Connell plays US athletics star Louie Zamperini who competed at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi-ruled Berlin, and was shot down in the Second World War, surviving a brutal ordeal in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Unbroken premiere

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Unbroken is his third acclaimed performance in the past year, following roles as a violent teenager in Starred Up and a British soldier in Belfast in ’71.

The pair appeared together at the Unbroken premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square last month. It is Jolie’s second film as a director, after 2011 war drama In The Land Of Blood And Honey, which was set during the Bosnian conflict.

At the lunch, hosted by the Peggy Siegal Company, Jolie, who married Brad Pitt in France in August, said going home to her six children was a welcome respite after shooting Unbroken’s harrowing prisoner of war scenes: “After a day of work on something like Unbroken all you want to do is come and home and play with your children and see them at lunch breaks and [play] Monopoly and everything else.”

O’Connell, 24, was born in Derby to an English mother and Irish father. He became a household name to British TV viewers for his role as James Cook in Channel 4 teen drama Skins.

He said he was impressed at how democratic Jolie, 39, was as a director: “I was surprised by how equal she approached the whole thing.

“She presented herself as an equal and that was consistent throughout the shoot.”

The actor said he welcomed talk of awards for Unbroken, which has been tipped as a possible Oscar winner, and was looking forward to working with George Clooney in Money Monster.

He said: “Awards season might validate the hard work I’ve been putting in. My focus is on February with Money Monster directed by Jodie Foster. I just love these strong-minded women!”

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