CULTURE

Angelina Jolie 2020? Actress Hints at Future in Politics

"I always say I'll go where I'm needed."

Dec. 28, 2018

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Ever since electing an Emmy-losing TV host to the presidency in 2016, Americans have been exponentially more willing to take seriously the fleeting political interests of other celebrities. Cynthia Nixon already ran for governor of New York, and both Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey have been floated as potential presidential candidates. If so, they may face some stiff competition from Angelina Jolie, who didn’t exactly shut down the idea of entering politics during a chat with the BBC on Friday.

While guest-editing the BBC’s radio show Today, Jolie talked to host Justin Webb about whether she’d ever throw her hat into the political ring. “Honestly, if you asked me 20 years ago, I would’ve laughed. I really don’t know—I always say I’ll go where I’m needed. I don’t know if I’m fit for politics, but then I’ve also joked that I don’t know if I have a skeleton left in my closet,” she said. “I’m pretty open and out there. I can take a lot on the chin, so that’s good. I honestly will do whatever I think can really make change.”

In the meantime, however, Jolie is perfectly content in her current apolitical role as a special envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency. “Right now, I am able to work with a UN agency that is the most in-the-field of all the UN agencies to do a lot of work directly with the people in need. I’m also able to work with governments and I’m also able to work with militaries, and so I sit in a very interesting place of being able to get a lot done without a title and without it being about myself or my policies,” she said. “So, for now, I’ll stay quiet.”

That didn’t stop Webb from putting Jolie “somewhere on the list” of the dozens of candidates expected to jump on the Democratic ballot in the 2020 election, prompting only a chuckle and a “thank you” from Jolie—which, as Webb pointed out, wasn’t an explicit “no.”

If the Oscar winner does end up going head-to-head with Donald Trump in 2020, you can bet her platform will be wildly different from his. During Friday’s conversation, she went on to discuss the difference between patriotism and the “narrow nationalism” of Trump’s “America First” policy. “I am a patriot, but I am also an internationalist and I love and value other people and other countries,” she said, per Newsweek. “To be a patriot is to be very proud of your country and even put your country first, but you do not think your country is better than others.”