JOLIE'S 'MIGHTY' ACT OF FRIENDSHIP

Angelina Jolie was friends with Mariane Pearl before portraying her. The actress took the role for Pearl's young son. NOBODY crosses a room like Angelina Jolie. She cut a purposeful stride across the polished floor of a Hollywood Roosevelt suite, a feat especially impressive because she was doing it in 4-inch heels and a pencil skirt. It was noon on a warm November day, weeks before Jolie's restrained and moving portrayal of real-life journalist Mariane Pearl in "A Mighty Heart" would land her nominations for Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. The role reminded audiences of the Oscar-winning actress' formidable talent, telling the wrenching story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's 2002 kidnapping -- and the race to find him before his killing in Pakistan by Islamic extremists -- from the perspective of his pregnant wife.

Jolie had recently returned from the London premiere of her much-hyped nearly nude role in the computer-generated adaptation of "Beowulf," and had just wrapped two high-profile films: "Wanted," a graphic novel adaptation opening in June in which she plays an assassin, and "Changeling," a Clint Eastwood-directed, Brian Grazer-produced period crime drama. But her most pressing concern at the moment was timing her day's work to end just as her children needed to be picked up from school. Jolie, 32, acknowledged that no matter who you are, wrangling life with four kids (in her case, Maddox, 6; Pax, 4; Zahara, 3; and Shiloh, 1) is no walk in the park. She said she couldn't do it alone.

"I have a great partner in it," she said of Brad Pitt. "I think you need at least to look at that other person and share the lack of sleep and insanity. And then it becomes fun." On this afternoon, Jolie seemed to have eluded the ever-swarming paparazzi. It was quiet in and around her room except for the chatter of a few vacationers at the pool below. She perched her very thin frame on a sleek white leather sofa with the careful demeanor of a guest. The conversation turned intimate as Jolie began charting the emotional, sometimes awkward, process of portraying her close friend Mariane Pearl, during the most heartbreaking moments of the journalist's life. It was the toughest role of her career, Jolie said. Pearl's son Adam and Jolie's Maddox were playmates long before a film was in the works. So when Pearl chose her for the role, Jolie was both honored and terrified.

"It was the one film I've done where I'd lost sleep and didn't think I could do it," she said. The film, based on Pearl's 2003 memoir, "A Mighty Heart: The Inside Story of the Al Qaeda Kidnapping of Danny Pearl," was directed by Michael Winterbottom. Focusing largely on the frantic search for Pearl (Dan Futterman), the film was shot mostly in India, documentary-style, with no rehearsals, very long takes and, for the most part, in chronological order. The shoot coincided with an especially difficult time for Jolie. The actress had just given birth to her first biological child and then, shortly after, lost her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, to a 7-year battle with ovarian cancer. But Jolie was clear that her own loss was mild compared with Pearl's story. "My thought was, 'My God, [Mariane] went through such unbelievable horror,' " Jolie said, the intensity of her gaze almost too intimate. " 'I can certainly get myself in gear and pretend on a movie set."

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