Angelina Jolie has been slammed for ‘taunting’ children using money in order to cast actors for her new film, First They Killed My Father.
Speaking to Vanity Fair in their cover story feature, Angelina spoke about how she’d looked at orphanages, slum schools and even circuses to find children who had experienced ‘hardship’ for her film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.
But the methods used have caused a huge backlash online, with one person calling it ‘beyond sick’.
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The article explained how the casting worked:
In order to find their lead, to play young Loung Ung, the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away.
The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie.
Angelina explained how Srey Moch was ultimately chosen to play the part.
She said:
Srey Moch was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time.
When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.
When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.
Angelina said the film was for the little girl and also for her own son, Maddox, who she adopted from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia, in 2002.
She said:
I’m doing this for [Ung], for her family, for Cambodia and very much also for Maddox, so he learns about who he is and becomes that much more connected to his country.
Unfortunately, the whole thing is now overshadowed by this controversial method of casting…
Oh dear.
