Angelina Jolie is no stranger to war zones — she’s filmed in Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya and wherever in the world those winged battles in Maleficent took place — but never before has she ventured to a place so genuinely hazardous. On Nov. 5, the Oscar-winning actress quietly slipped into a part of Ukraine even seasoned war correspondents rarely go — the frontline city of Kherson — for an appearance so unlikely that Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Alisa Orlova initially thought reports of her sighting were “a joke.”
“There are almost daily attacks on Kherson,” Orlova tells Rambling Reporter. “The rockets can hit the city in as little as one minute, maybe 30 seconds. But then the videos started appearing in my feed with [Jolie] in the hospital with children. She really was in Kherson.”
Indeed, she was. Jolie spent the day in a maternity ward and a children’s clinic, sitting on the floor with kids, surrounded by toys. Local outlets reported she traveled as part of a humanitarian aid program, and the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration presented her with a commemorative “Kherson” coin.
“People were grateful that she was not afraid to come,” Orlova says, noting that if Jolie had merely wanted “to do some PR, she could have easily gone to Kyiv, which is much safer.” Still, no good deed goes unpunished, and the trip took an unfortunate turn when one of her drivers was detained near Mykolaiv after the motorcade was stopped at a checkpoint. The man — reportedly of draft age — was taken to a recruitment office despite insisting he was escorting “an important person, a peacekeeper.” Jolie was later seen walking inside the draft office, and the driver was ultimately released. Says Orlova, “There are rumors he has been let go and promised to enlist after her trip, but we don’t know for sure.”
Turns out even the Ukrainian army can’t say no to Angelina Jolie.
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Also in Rambling Reporter:
Sting’s musical ‘The Last Ship,’ inspired by his British shipbuilding roots, arrives at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera for nine performances in June.
Brothers discover a pristine Superman No. 1 comic in their late mom’s attic. Estimated to fetch up to $6M, it could break auction records.
This story appeared in the Nov. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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