Angelina Jolie didn’t hold back.
While promoting her new film at the San Sebastián film festival in Spain on Sunday, the longtime actress said she no longer recognizes her own country as free speech is increasingly under attack by President Donald Trump.
“I love my country, but I don’t at this time recognize my country,” Jolie said when asked by an interviewer if she worried about freedom of speech in the United States.
Her concern is shared by countless other celebrities and prominent figures, 400 of whom signed an open letter with the American Civil Liberties Union in support of late-show host Jimmy Kimmel after ABC suspended him because of remarks he made in his opening monologue over Charlie Kirk’s killing.
Kimmel is returning on Tuesday night, but about a quarter of ABC stations across the country won’t be airing his show, according to the New York Times.
“Anything, anywhere, that divides or, of course, limits personal expressions and freedoms and, from anyone, I think is very dangerous,” Jolie said at the festival. “These are very, very heavy times we’re all living in together.”
The Oscar-winning actress, 50, was promoting her new film Couture, directed by French filmmaker Alice Winocour. In the film, she plays an American film director who has to produce work for Paris Fashion Week just as she is diagnosed with breast cancer.
The subject matter is personal for Jolie: In 2013, she underwent a double mastectomy and later had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to reduce her high genetic risk of cancer, which caused the deaths of her mother and grandmother.
She said she frequently thought of her mother as she was making the movie. “I wish she was able to speak more as openly as I have been … and not feel as alone,” she said.
