Angelina Jolie criticised for way she cast child actors

Angelina Jolie criticised for way she cast child actors



Angelina Jolie has been branded 'disgusting' and 'cruel' after revealing how she cast the children for her film about the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.

The director told Vanity Fair that she wanted a child who had experienced real hardship to play the lead role, and so went hunting through orphanages, circuses, and slum schools for candidates.

Those selected were then given a test in which they were presented with money and told to snatch it up when they thought of a reason why they wanted it.



Jolie would ask the child why they should keep the money or it would be taken back again.

She said: 'Srey Moch [the girl ultimately chosen for the part] 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.'

Through tears Jolie added: '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.'



Twitter users reacted with fury to the interview, branding Jolie 'cruel' and saying her casting was 'shocking and out of order'.

First They Killed My Father is set in Cambodia, a country where Jolie has honorary citizenship and where she adopted one of her children from.

It documents the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the communist regime which ruled the country between 1975 and 1979.



Leader Pol Pot mercilessly persecuted what he deemed to be 'enemy' elements of society, which included but was not limited to, anyone connected to the old government, professionals and intellectuals, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists.

Experts believe that more than 2million people were killed as a result of the persecutions, around a third of Cambodia's population at the time.

As a result virtually no family was unaffected by the slaughter, with whole households wiped from history and buried in the so-called Killing Fields.