Angelina Jolie Speaks Out on Crazy Child Casting Story

Credit: Fameflynet Pictures

Angelina Jolie has been receiving hate this week after an excerpt from a Vanity Fair profile seemed to display a cruel and unusual method for child actors.

The article described casting directors for her film First They Killed My Father searched for child actors by giving impoverished children money then taking it away as an acting exercise. Now, Angelina and her producer Rithy Panh issued joint statements refuting the claims that the movie was exploitative.

“I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting,” Jolie said. “I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

Rithy, who himself is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, added that casting “was done in the most sensitive way possible” and that “the children were not tricked or entrapped, as some have suggested. They understood very well that this was acting, and make believe.”