Here are some more photos of Angelina Jolie giving all of those poor nerds their first non-Hobbit boners at Comic-Con yesterday. Salt opens today, and it seems like Angelina is going to push through, doing press to very last day. USA Today published an extensive and interesting interview with Jolie this morning – it’s a long piece (full piece online here), so I’m just going to do the highlights:

On her character Evelyn Salt: “I loved that she wasn’t completely good. There’s something about that,” Jolie says, smiling warmly. “Not to say that’s me. But there’s certainly a side of me that isn’t completely …” She searches for the word. “Sane,” she chooses. “Or completely ‘even’ all the time. We all have our dark sides.”

On her own evolution: “My evolution, and any extremes in my evolution, has been my personality, out of the nature of what’s inside me,” Jolie says. “I’m very unaware of my public self. I don’t read anything written about me. I don’t look at magazines. I only watch the films and premieres if I have to. I still haven’t seen some of my films. If you become aware of a public self, you’re in danger of becoming a very artificial person.”

How Jolie is in person, according to USA Today: In person, Jolie, 35, is delicate in a way that seems the antithesis of her furious screen alter egos. The surprising adjective for this iconic screen vixen in real life is … sweet. Her smile, when it really turns on, is big and goofy. Genuine. It comes out when she spots a picture of a baby on a stranger’s cellphone, reaching out for it: “Is that your daughter? … Oh. So cuuuuute.” With 2-year-old twins at home, she looks at the picture again and asks, almost conspiratorially, how the baby’s hat manages to stay on. When told it doesn’t, she leans back on the couch, nodding knowingly.

On her role in 2008’s Changeling: “That was very cathartic for me. I wish [my mom] would have seen it,” Jolie says. “That was very much her: All of her strength was in the way she loved her children. She wasn’t a very strong person, but touch her children and she would rise up.”

On deciding to do Salt: “I grew up with all the guy movies,” Jolie says, rattling off a list of her favorites actors: Brando, McQueen, Pacino, “but I didn’t have the reference of a woman. Now I have daughters, and a part of me wants them to have that when they grow up.”

On being a female action star: “I was surprised a studio was ready to put that big summer movie money into something that had never worked before — a woman in an action movie that isn’t fantasy,” she says. Not the Tomb Raider films? “But that’s fantasy,” Jolie says. “It’s odd to think about. It’s always some kind of mystical thing — or there’s a pairing.”

Director Phillip Noyce on how she’s changed since he directed her in The Bone Collector: “She was relatively inexperienced,” he says. “She was also a complete unknown — a wallflower at my Sunday barbecue when she came to visit. Nobody was talking to this girl who was sitting in the corner. Ten years later? Everyone wants to talk to her.”

On Brad: “He’s definitely made me a better person. I’ve learned so much from him, as you do when you come together with another person. You both make each other better. You both learn about the best of each other, and recognize the things where you’re failing, or where you need to step up. When it’s a great partnership, you really are patient with each other,” she says. “He’s been a huge influence on me. In all ways, from my parenting to my art, to … everything.”

On her wild youth: “There was a certain madness I was going through,” Jolie says. “I learned a lot about myself. People tend to sum up times in your life and simplify,” she says, shrugging. “I would say there’s a way of being bold when you’re young that seems very brave. … What’s perceived as tough is a very funny thing. I think to be a parent is one of the scariest, boldest things to do, as opposed to, um, getting a tattoo. … Much more than jumping into a pool when you’re 20.”

On who she is now: “I see it almost as the flip side. I think I’m finally living completely free and brave. I’m bolder now,” she says. “I was a lot less when I was younger.”

[From USA Today]

Once again, a better interview than that piece of crap Vanity Fair profile. Can’t Vanity Fair hire someone decent to do their celebrity interviews? I mean, really.

As far as reviews of Salt go, the critics aren’t in love with it, but they don’t hate it either. I get the feeling that if the lead character was a man, played by Tom Cruise or whoever, the critics would really be hating on it, but because it’s a woman doing all of the stunt work and dangerous stuff, the critics are going a little bit easier on the film. Is it chivalry? I don’t know. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 56% (for comparison, Inception is at 86%, and Tom Cruise’s Knight & Day is at 54%). USA Today basically says Angelina and her stunts are the best part of the film, and that Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor are criminally underused. BOO! What else…?

Roger Ebert (Sun-Times) really liked it, giving it four stars and calling it a “a damn fine thriller” and that Angelina “is one fine-looking woman. You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s why she gets the big bucks. The movies have celebrated her eyes, lips, profile, biceps, boobs, waist, butt, thighs. “Salt” pays tribute to her ankles. Anyone who can jump from the heights she does here, in the way she does it, may die from a lot of causes, but a sprained ankle won’t be one of them.” Et cetera. For a full listing of all of the top critics’ reviews, Rotten Tomatoes has them here – some good, some meh, some calling Angelina “Jean Claude Van Damme”.