The Hollywood star is in Australia to film her second movie as director. But what sort of welcome should she expect?

Angelina Jolie arrived in Sydney last Friday to direct the second world war film Unbroken. 

The movie, about Olympic track star Louie Zamperini, who survived shark attacks and internment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

Is Jolie’s second directorial feature. Her first, In the Land of Blood and Honey, wasn’t seen by many. 

Paparazzi shots of her trip to Australia are likely to be seen by more people.

And the sharks are also likely to be circling. 

Many movie stars have dipped their toes into Australian waters only to have them nearly snapped off as the result of diva-like behaviour, anti-Aussie comments or simple bad manners.

Jolie’s high-wattage star presence will attract the usual tabloid twittering and paparazzi hullaballoo, especially after a relative drought of big productions in Australia. (Her partner Brad Pitt was due to film the remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in Australia but pulled out of the project.)

Apart from The Wolverine, also filmed at Fox Studios, there’s been a drop in big-budget Hollywood investment and, therefore, stars. Even Wolverine star Hugh Jackman, perhaps because of his Sydney roots and down-to-earth manner, doesn’t have the attraction of a reclusive Leonardo DiCaprio.

DiCaprio was in Sydney in 2011 for the filming of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, staying in a $10,000-a-week mansion in Vaucluse, the upmarket waterfront suburb where Jolie is also encamped. His main crime seemed to be going to nightclubs and wearing a baseball cap to avoid photographers, so he remained relatively anonymous.

Perhaps Australia calms eccentricities. Even Tom Cruise managed to avoid any public gaffes when in Sydney for Mission Impossible II, and Russell Crowe manages to control his temper while in his home town.

Gone are the days when stars like Dennis Hopper, in Australia to shoot Mad Dog Morgan in 1974, would survive on a daily diet of half a gallon of rum, 28 beers and three grams of cocaine”. He refused to shower to get into the character of bushman Morgan, then jumped into the Murray River when make-up artists complained about his personal hygiene.

Compare this behaviour to that of Nicolas Cage – a man, who let’s not forget, ate a cockroach for a scene in Vampire’s Kiss, named his son after Superman (Kal-el Cage) and has a pyramid ready for his body to be laid in after his death. When Cage was in Australia to film Ghost Rider in 2007 he witnessed a drunken brawl, which “really disturbed” him.

The most important lesson for any visiting star is never piss off the locals. Back in 1959, Ava Gardner was reported as describing her experience of filming the apocalyptic drama On the Beach in Melbourne as “the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world”. In fact Gardner, who despite trying to pash co-star Gregory Peck to the strains of Waltzing Matilda, was misquoted – but she still went down in folklore as a Victoria-hating harlot.

Stars just don’t rock the boat any more. They fly in, appear on the red carpet, pop into a local radio station and spout junket speak about their latest franchise movie. Jolie has dialled down the oddball behaviour since motherhood, much to the tabloid gossip columnists’ disappointment, and is now more likely to appear as Jolie the responsible parent than Jolie who kept then-husband Billy Bob Thorton’s blood in a vial around her neck.

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