An Intimate Dialogue: How Angelina Jolie Helped Salma Hayek Confront Her Fears in Without Blood

Salma Hayek Pinault and Angelina Jolie have been close friends since co-starring in Marvel's Eternals in 2021, and the two are now promoting a new project together: Without Blood, a drama Jolie directed, co-wrote, and co-produced, which arrives in U.S. theaters this week via Brainstorm Media. To mark the release, Entertainment Tonight got the actresses on camera interviewing each other — a rare setup for two A-listers — and Hayek used the conversation to admit something unexpected: she initially feared she wasn't good enough to take on the film's demanding lead role.

In the movie, adapted from Alessandro Baricco's novel, Hayek plays a war survivor seeking revenge on those who hurt her as a young girl, with Demián Bichir co-starring. The film marks Jolie's fourth war drama as a director, following In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, and First They Killed My Father. Hayek said her fear going in was real — that she wasn't up to the part and dreaded the suffering it would require — and that Jolie embraced that fear, helping her work through it until she found herself fully inside the character.

Jolie, for her part, said she cast her friend precisely because she knows her so deeply, and hoped audiences would discover a side of Hayek — her craft, her intellect, her emotional depth — that doesn't always come through on screen. She also revealed that Baricco's story stayed with her for ten years before she made the film, resonating with moments in her own life where she felt broken. The production was a family affair, too: Jolie's eldest sons, Maddox and Pax Jolie-Pitt, worked behind the scenes in the assistant director department.

Hayek framed the fictional war as a stand-in for everyone's private battles, saying the movie is ultimately about the need to be heard and the courage it takes to truly listen to someone else. Her own reflections carried that theme personally. Fresh off turning 60 in early September, she said she now feels all the ages of her life are together at once, and that she is more interested these days in asking her future self for guidance than advising her younger self. Asked what gives her hope, she pointed to laughter, young people, and a world slowly learning to communicate more.