Some days, when I have nothing better to do, I sit around and worry about Angelina Jolie’s career. It’s not that my concern for Angelina’s career is of the “no one wants to work with her” variety, nor is it ever “Angelina can’t carry a movie.” Both of those arguments are false. No, my concerns about her career revolve around the whole “Angelina should be working MORE” variety. Her last starring role was The Tourist. In 2010. Maleficent will be her next film chronologically as an actress – and it doesn’t come out until 2014. Yes, she took time off to chill out with her family and to write and direct In the Land of Blood and Honey… but really, she’s one of the Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses, and she gets to see tons of scripts (GOOD scripts), and it’s a shame she works so rarely.

So… I don’t know if this is good news or not. THR claims that Angelina is going to take a small cameo role in a film called The Great Beauty, directed by Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino. I wonder if Angelina is playing “the great beauty”?

Paolo Sorrentino, who won two Cannes jury prizes in the last five years and whose last film, This Must Be the Place, was his first project set outside Italy, will return to Rome for his next project, which he says will feature Angelina Jolie in a small role.

Sorrentino is the 42-year-old Neapolitan director behind Il Divo, the film that told the story of Italy’s polarizing political icon Giulio Andreotti, which won the Cannes jury prize in 2008. He followed with This Must Be the Place, which starred Sean Penn as an ageing rocker out to avenge the man who revealed that his father had been a Nazi and won Cannes’ Ecumenical Jury prize in 2011.

Two earlier Sorrentino films, Amico di Famiglia (Family Friend) from 2006 and Le Conseguenze dell’amore (The Consequences of Love) from 2004 also screened in competition in Cannes.

Sorrentinto said his next film, La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty), will be set in Rome. The film, which he said will have a cameo role for Jolie, will star Toni Servillo, who will play a La Dolce Vita-style reporter. It is tentatively scheduled for release in 2013, though it is not clear whether it will be finished in time to become Sorrentino’s fifth consecutive film to screen in competition in Cannes.

The film will be Servillo’s third collaboration with Sorrentino: he played a small role in Conseguenze dell’amore and played the central role of Andreotti in Il Divo.

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

I mean… sure. I don’t have a problem with her doing small parts or cameos in small, European art films (that sound like Fellini knock-offs). I just wish that these little parts came in between more varied and more constant work as an actress. Incidentally – most people have forgotten that Angelina finally signed on with a Hollywood agent last year. Jolie is now being represented by Ilene Feldman at IFA Talent – Feldman is Ryan Gosling’s agent. It was said at the time that Angelina was seeking to do smaller films and more varied work, looking to move beyond the big-budget franchise films. But… is this the answer? A big-budget, special-effects-heavy Disney film followed by a cameo in an Italian art-house movie? Eh.

Photos courtesy of WENN.