LOS ANGELES ? Can you imagine Angelina Jolie as a wallflower in a party?

Well, Phillip Noyce, who directed Angelina in ?The Bone Collector? in 1999, remembers how she was then. ?She was a relative unknown who could walk down the street,? said Phillip, casual in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun, Mexico. ?I remember her coming to my house for a party and nobody paid any attention to her. She was the wallflower. Of course, 10 years later, she couldn?t walk anywhere outside a guarded situation without everybody paying attention and inventing things about her life.?

?She was just finding her feet,? said the Australian filmmaker of the actress with whom she is reunited in ?Salt,? an action-thriller about a CIA officer on the run. ?But she was already an accomplished actress, of course. She was about to win the Academy Award on her next film (?Girl, Interrupted?). She had been in ?Gia,? which was a tour de force of acting and commitment. She was no ingénue even though it was the beginning of her brilliant career.?

Phillip, who directed such acclaimed films as ?The Quiet American? and ?Dead Calm,? volunteered, ?The person who came to the ?Salt? set was almost the same person 10 years ago in terms of her openness ? except she is much more experienced. So she had a lot more to offer. Ten years later, she is a Stradivarius. You didn?t have to suggest. She could play every tune. It was a lot easier to work with her.

Elaborate dance

?It was a very elaborate dance between the director and the actress where sometimes the actress is leading the director, as you do in a modern dance. But she was an ally. If there was a disagreement with the studio or anyone, inevitably I had a great ally. The ally is a superstar so that?s a huge advantage to me as a director, particularly in telling a complicated story like this, with all the different options that we had. She was always beside me so that was a really good thing.?

The director responsible for the hit Harrison Ford thrillers ?Patriot Games? and ?Clear and Present Danger? stressed that Angelina did not bring any of her superstar fame to the ?Salt? shoot. ?Whatever was going on outside was kept outside,? he stressed.

He added, ?The disadvantage was, sometimes when we were filming in the streets in New York, there was as much organization about how we would protect her as there was about how we would shoot her scenes. It was always a problem ? her safety and the paparazzi interfering with the day-to-day shooting.?

Asked if he ever got nervous watching his A-list lead do many of the film?s exciting stunts, Phillip said, ?You hold your breath and turn away. Most of the stunts Angelina ended up doing ? I never thought the insurance company would let her do those.?

On the ledge

With a laugh, he admitted that he did not expect Angelina herself to leap from trucks or buildings. He had planned to resort to CGI. ?There was so much more CGI in my mind when we began filming than it turned out,? he said. ?I took Angelina up that building that she?s dangling off the side of in the movie. I said, ?Look, there?s your [character?s] apartment and then you get out of that window over there and then I?ll get a shot. Then we?ll put you in the studio at the end of the film and we?ll blue screen it.?

Angelina said, ?Oh, no, no, no.? I said, ?What do you mean, no, no, no? It?s a real building with 11 stories. You don?t want to ? Let?s not talk about it, please, come on.? A week and a half into filming, she?s on the ledge, just laughing. I had a lot of sleepless nights because who wants to be responsible for that? Finally, I said, ?Okay, if the insurance company is going to insure her, what can I say???

Final arbitrator

?Angelina has a wonderful collaborator, Simon Crane, a stunt coordinator who has worked with her on many films,? Phillip revealed. ?She trusts Simon with her life, as she has to. So there really is no limit to what she?ll try as long as Simon, as the final arbitrator, says it?s okay, and as long as Eunice (Huthart), her stunt double, is able to demonstrate that the stunt ? whatever it is, like jumping from a truck to another one ? is safe. Obviously, Angelina is doing that with a safety harness, with a big crane that?s traveling along and taking her through the air, but before Angelina would do it, somebody else had to do it and it had to be tested.?

?Relentless? was a word Angelina?s co-star, Chiwetel Ejiofor, used several times to describe his co-star?s enthusiasm to do stunts in the movie that also stars Liev Schreiber. ?We traveled around to do a lot of stunts that were on the highways,? Chiwetel said in a separate interview, also in Cancun. ?I remember it was quite late in the shoot so there was a lot of exhaustion that crept in. Yet Angelina was relentless with all the stuff ? jumping onto the different places in the highways, then going into a chase sequence and on the bike. It?s an incredible labyrinth of action that she was totally involved in. Liev and I had the easy jobs because we were in the trucks and the cars chasing her.?

He continued, ?We began one of the major chase scenes as exterior shots so there were a lot of people around, a lot of paparazzi. She was totally focused. It became quite a physical sequence. She was totally in the moment, in character the entire day. She seemed unexhausted even though she was dealing with everybody else and everything. She?s a real movie star.?

Adrenaline junkie

The object of all this admiring talk said with a laugh, ?I should probably be more fearful in some ways.? Angelina, radiant in a room with its Cancun sun-dappled windows, confessed, ?I?m a little fearless to the point of stupidity sometimes. I have the scars to prove it. I am an adrenaline junkie so I have been fortunate that I?ve been able to do this type of films.?

What do her kids think of the characters she plays, especially Evelyn Salt? ?They saw the ?Salt? trailer when we walked into our hotel room,? Angelina answered, referring to her brood?s (Brad and the twins stayed behind) arrival at their Ritz Carlton suite. ?Half of them were completely uninterested. Shiloh wanted me to cut my hair short. They say funny things like that. Pax got upset because somebody was trying to hurt his mom. He saw my feet wrapped and he got mad. But in the next minute, it was all fine. They?re very confused, to be honest. They don?t quite know what to think. Even the change of hair color (she goes blonde) was confusing to them. I?ll say it?s okay because mommy?s okay in the end.?

?He was very supportive,? she said of Brad?s reaction when she told him about doing ?Salt.? ?I just had Vivienne and Knox. I was sitting in my nightgown in bed feeling very girlie and soft. The script was in the bed and I said, ?I think I?ve found something that will help me get fired up and be physical again.? I have not worked for over a year because I was pregnant. He said that anything I was ready to do, he was happy for me. We met doing this style of film (?Mr. & Mrs. Smith?). He knows it?s fun for me. We have fun together doing a lot of physical things. So even in my motorcycle training and things like that, he goes with me.?

Email the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com.