Angelina Jolie Takes on Directing Role
Louie Zamperini's life story is epic. He overcame adversity to get to the Olympics, became a top bombardier in World War II, survived 47 days at sea after a plane crash and endured two and a half years in a prison camp. And all of that only scratches the surface.
The book was an instant bestseller, but the shark attack, the war and the sheer emotions that came with it would make for a difficult film production. Needless to say, someone special was needed to bring this story to the big screen. Angelina Jolie stepped up to the challenge.
"I remember thinking, 'Why has it taken over 50 years for someone to do this, it’s the most obvious movie,'" Jolie tells New Day's Chris Cuomo. "And then there was a day where I thought, 'Oh. That’s why.'"
She showed Zamperini the film toward the end of his life. He was in the hospital, "preparing himself to pass away," Jolie says.
"He was revisiting his memories. And I was just there to watch those sparkly blue eyes, and, you know, just felt honored to be there."
When she started preparing to direct "Unbroken," Jolie was making the decision to have a preventive double mastectomy after her doctors told her that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. She is grateful that she was able to be around Zamperini at that time; that she was able to focus on his survival story while essentially writing her own.
[protected-iframe id="d4aeea25ba9fd1e5ec04191e3dc7d2f8-51343834-19950648" info="http://www.cnn.com/video/api/embed.html#/video/bestoftv/2014/12/10/newday-cuomo-angelina-jolie-unbroken-part-2.cnn" width="416" height="234" frameborder="0"]"Unbroken" comes to theaters on Christmas Day.
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Senate Report: CIA Misled Public on Torture
The CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during the Bush era didn't work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no "ticking time bomb" information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.
The majority report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a damning condemnation of the tactics - branded by critics as torture - the George W. Bush administration deployed in the fear-laden days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The techniques, according to the report, were "deeply flawed," poorly managed and often resulted in "fabricated" information.
The long-delayed study, distilled from more than six million CIA documents, also says the agency consistently misled Congress and the Bush White House about the harsh methods it used and the results it obtained from interrogating al Qaeda suspects.
"Morning Minute" with Michaela Pereira – December 10, 2014
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