"Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" airs tonight on W9. The film marks the 1st collaboration between Angelina Jolie and her father Jon Voight. Return to the reunion scene between the two actors, scrambled for years.
Released in 2001, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider marks the first on-camera collaboration between adult Angelina Jolie and her father, comedian Jon Voight (the actress had previously starred alongside her in Lookin 'to Get Out when she was not only 6 years old). Cold with her father for many years, the actress had so far always refused to collaborate with him. But in 2000, when she had just been chosen to play the video game heroine Lara Croft, she asked director Simon West to hire Jon Voight for the role of Lord Richard Croft, the heroine's father.
In the biography devoted to the actress (published in 2011 by Éditions du Recherches Midi), Andrew Morton underlines that this proposal is " the sign that she was now certain she could eclipse him as an actor, and that of a timid personal reconciliation Indeed, the filming of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is an outstretched hand from the actress to her father, whose career was starting to falter.
Lara Croft / Angelina Jolie: an absent father
The Macadam Cowboy actor and his wife, actress Marcheline Bertrand, separated in 1976 when Angelina Jolie was only one year old. The girl and her brother James Haven (born in 1973) were raised by their mother who then abandoned her acting career. Angelina Jolie and James Haven see their father very little and decide to cut ties. The actress will clarify later in an interview with Access Hollywood that she doesn't want to publicize the reason for her "bad relationship" with her father. .
In the action film, the two actors only share one scene, but the intensity of the latter takes on all its magnitude in view of the tormented relationship between Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight. In the movie, Lord Croft dies while Lara is still just a child, but as she tries to solve the magic triangle riddle, Lara sees her father and chats with him. She tells him : " This time has been stolen from us, and that is not fair. I still miss you ", while the latter apologizes for having left.
United International Pictures
In his book, Andrew Morton explains: " It was as if father and daughter were able to relate more easily through cinema than in real life, thanks to words written by others but interpreted by them.". Finally Angelina could hear what she had always wanted to hear from her father:" I miss you, and I love you forever and ever. "Except that Richard Croft was speaking to Lara ...
This scene, which resonates with the personal history of the actors, was very difficult to shoot. In an interview with journalist Ann Curry, Angelina Jolie confesses " Jon and I couldn't stop crying. We had to stop taking, and we didn't talk to each other. We would meet in this tent, we would go our separate ways, and then we would meet again until the scene was completely over. Then we hugged each other. "
United International Pictures
A reconciliation under the watchful eye of the cameras that Angelina Jolie will finally regret, specifying in Los Angeles Times find it sad that the most intimate moment she has had with her father was in public. It was also during this interview that the young woman spoke for the first time about the positive influence her father had on his life: " My dad was always there for me all my life, but I was also very independent, and he always sent me letters, books and information. And in the end, we did the same with our lives: actor. So much so that our scenes ended up getting very intimate. "
Jon Voigt was delighted that his professional dream had finally come true. He described the shoot as "a moment of joy", during which father and daughter laughed together and showed each other their love.
A short but intense scene which will have had the merit of reconciling the actors ... for a short period since in 2002, Angelina Jolie again cut ties with her father after the latter had said to Access Hollywood that her daughter suffered from "mental problems". Since then, the two actors seem to have reconciled again.
