Official Transcript

JOLIE: I am so inspired by these people. And they are the greatest strength. You know, so, it’s, it's not, er, you know, you have that memory. You have that moment -- I have had it -- where, even just today, I was, you know, breast- feeding, and tired, and thinking, God, I really don't know how I'm going to get myself together to be thinking for this interview. But you think, Jesus, the things these people go through. I owe it to all of them to get myself together, to stop whining about being tired, and get there and get focused, and, because God, it's the least I can do, with what they live with and what they can, you know, they pull themselves out of the most horrible despair. And they're able to smile and get on with it and survive. And, so, you don't -- it's that same thing. You don't, er, you don't think, poor me, what I have seen. You just think, like, Jesus, thank God I, I'm not experiencing it.

---COOPER: Right. The first time you went to a refugee camp, what was that like?

JOLIE: God, it was, it was Sierra Leone. So, it was a different kind of a camp. It wasn’t the, it was, they were still having civil war. And it was a, it was a kind of just this area of people who had been, er, who had had their limbs cut off from, from the violence. And it was an amputee camp. And it was er, probably to this day the worst camp I have ever seen. And I knew I was changing as a person. I was learning so much about life. And I was, so, in some ways, it was the best moment of my life, because it...

---COOPER: Right.

JOLIE: ... changed me for the better. And I was never going to be never going to be, never going to want for more in my life or be...

(CROSSTALK)

---COOPER: I mean, how did it change you?

JOLIE: I was very er, focused on myself, on my career, on my life, on this -- you know, we have so much and we, we want for other things, and we don't realize how grateful we should be about things. I had been -- done things, you know, er, like most teenagers, you know, hurting myself, or doing things...

---COOPER: Right.

JOLIE: I mean, all those things. You take your own life for granted. And then, suddenly, you see these people who are really fighting something, who are really surviving, who have so much er, pain and loss and things that you have no idea. And, as soon as I got to a phone, I called my mom and just told her how much I loved her. And I was so grateful I knew where she was and so grateful I knew where my brother was, that, that it just changed everything.

---COOPER: Right. And, then, how do you come back? I mean, it's got to be -- it's always -- I have found it always a hard thing, once you're there and you see that, and your eyes are open and, and your heart is open and your mind is open. And then you come back, and especially I mean in this world that you live in, it's got to be such a strange -- it's got to be surreal.

(CROSSTALK)

JOLIE: By the time I, I got on the plane and on the way home, I , I didn't, I knew that I would somehow commit to doing something with these people in my life. And I knew that would be the only way to, to settle it in myself.

---COOPER: And why refugees? Of all the things. I mean, there are so many causes around the world. There are so many problems. Why is it, you're, you're focusing on a problem which is almost intractable. I mean, there, there have always been refugees, internally displaced people. There almost, likely, will always be.

JOLIE: One, I went to Cambodia, and I learned a lot about the situation there and the refugees there. But, but I got this book on the U.N., because I really liked the idea of the U.N. I know it's not perfect. But loved what -- what it stood for. And, so, I got a book on the U.N. And I was reading about it. And then I got to this chapter on refugees. And it said almost 20 million people are displaced. And it showed pictures of Rwanda and pictures of all these , and I was kind of, and I was just shocked. I thought, how is that possible, that I have known nothing about this, and I'm 20-something years old, and, and there are this many people displaced in the world? So, I knew it was something that had to be discussed, and, and wasn't being discussed. And um, and then, the more I read about it, the more I just thought, they really are the most vulnerable people in the world. They really don't have an option for, it's not just that they're poor. It's not just that they're hungry. It's not just that, it's that they are in fear of, of, for their lives. They are going to be persecuted for their race, their religion, their nationality. They, they don't have the protection of their own country. They're somewhere uprooted, without any protection, with their families, relying on somebody to open their doors for someplace for them to lay their head down or get some food or something. And they may not be able to return home for decades.

---COOPER: And it's totally out of their control. I mean, I have always found that when you -- it's almost that term, refugees. You kind of make assumptions about who they are. But, in fact, they are, I mean, they are everyone. We all could be refugees at one point or another in our lives. And, all of a sudden, to have that lack of control, I always just find such a -- a sad thing.

JOLIE: Yes. And I think that happened with the Balkans. I think a lot of people suddenly saw refugees that looked like them. And it was a different thing. It was a , it was a new thing.

---COOPER: Do you go through phases? I mean, when I first went to Somalia in the early '90s during the famine, I remember being overwhelmed. And then I felt like I was going through phases, the more wars I would go to, you know, of anger, and then er, you know confusion

JOLIE: Yes.

---COOPER: ... and then outrage, and then sort of resignation, then sort of er, an open feeling that allows me to continue doing it. But do...

JOLIE: Yes.

---COOPER: Do you go through those phases?

JOLIE: I did. Yes. I don't know which phase I'm in now. But I did. I went through -- I went through a definite phase of being, er, I think, just shocked at first. And then I wanted to save the world. And I was sure I could save the world.

---COOPER: Mmm-hmm.

JOLIE: And then I was -- and then I did feel helpless and just angry.

---COOPER: A doctor in Niger said to me who was with this group Doctors Without Borders, which I'm a big fan of, said, you know, he -- he tells the nurses not to cry in front of the mothers. He said, that's not your job, that you're -- you know, if you want to cry, go cry somewhere in a corner, but don't -- you can't do it in front of the mothers, because it's not fair to them, because then they will worry about, what's going to happen to my kid, which I just found -- I don't know. It's always sort of stayed with me.

JOLIE: Yes. I kept a journal for the -- I still do when I go into the field. And I think part of it was just me being able to do this and not -- and not look at the...

---COOPER: Yes. It helps.

JOLIE: Not cry. Yes.

---COOPER: It makes it easier sometimes.

JOLIE: I'm working.

---COOPER: Yes. Believe me, I know that feeling. I also read the statistic, which I know you know, is that -- that a child is orphaned every 14 seconds, which is just, again, it just -- it's hard to wrap your mind around, you know?

JOLIE: Yeah. No, it's -- it's unbelievable. And -- and that's another thing that they have been -- we have been recently fighting for, you know, all the AIDS orphans and all the kids that are out there, because...

---COOPER: But you, you were very supportive of a bill that, that actually passed and got signed by the president...

JOLIE: Yeah.

---COOPER: ... but then wasn't funded for a long time.

JOLIE: Yes. It was...

---COOPER: Is -- has it been funded?

JOLIE: It was one of my first lessons in Washington. It was like, oh, a bill. I'm pushing for a bill. The bill passed. Success. And then somebody said, and now the funding. And I thought, and now the funding? I thought was that was the whole...

---COOPER: And it's still not funded.

JOLIE: But you realize that, no, that that's, you know, first, they, they make it a priority to do it. And then, and I, I don't, I don't, you know, there are a lot of people that are going to come together. And I will spend more time in Washington, try to raise this funding, and hope that the funding doesn't come from somewhere else.