, particularly with rcesept to her career. “I’ve never not been grateful to be an actor but I think when I was younger I needed [acting] more. I was trying to question things in life so you find these characters that help you find things and grow.” She explains that her relationship with acting has changed over the years. “It’s like being in therapy, in a way,” she says, taking a forkful of penne and chicken. “You’re drawn to certain roles because they question something about life, or about love, or about freedom. You ask these questions as you grow up: am I strong enough, am I sane enough? Do I understand love, do I understand myself?” Now, she adds, “I’m older and I know who I am and I’m less interested in the character helping me answer something than in being able to answer it for myself, as a woman, as an adult, with my family.” We talk about Salt, an action film released last year in which Jolie punches, shoots and kicks her way through the CIA, Secret Service and a cabal of rogue Russian spies. The title role was initially written for a man but the script was modified when it became clear she was interested. “I’d just had the twins,” she recalls. “I’d been in a nightgown for a very, very long time. And I was sitting in the hospital breastfeeding and reading this script in my nightgown, feeling so soft and mama and I was flipping these pages and it was all fighting and shooting guns. I thought, ‘That’s what I need. I need to get out of my nightgown and I need a gun.’ I’m sure many a woman who has been through childbirth has thought ‘It would be nice to get a little physical, get a little wild to remember what that other side is like.’”She says she is not thinking of quitting acting any time soon. “But I don’t love it as much [as I did]. I love being a mom.” She is, however, clearly excited about being behind the camera for the first time. “I prefer it to acting,” she says. I ask if she drew on her experiences with the directors she has worked with. “I think I’ve learnt something from all of them – even the ones I didn’t like.” I try to get her to dish the dirt on the latter but she politely declines. She is full of praise for Michael Winterbottom, who directed her in A Mighty Heart (2007), the story of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was abducted and killed in Pakistan. “I also learned a lot from Clint Eastwood [her director in 2008’s Changeling] about how to appreciate the members of the crew, empowering them to do their job. I never worked with David Fincher [director of Fight Club and The Social Network] but I know him as a friend and have seen how meticulous he is, his attention to detail, how hard he works – even when you’re too tired to go back into the room – to make sure that you’ve got it right.”Fincher is in the frame to direct her in the forthcoming Cleopatra, but Jolie hints that we may see less of her on screen in future. “As Brad and I get older we’re going to do fewer films. I’ve been working for a long time, he’s been working for a long time we’ve had a nice run and don’t want to be doing this our whole lives. There are a lot of other things to do.”China is on her list of places still to explore, and she would love to see Burma, “but not in the wrong circumstances”, given that the country is under the control of an oppressive military junta. “And Iran. I’d love to go Iran.” Her dream, however, is to “cross the Sahara. It takes 28 days it would have to be on a camel. I wonder if I could do it in pieces and station the kids along the way,” she muses.I tell her it sounds ideal for their nomadic family and we stand to say goodbye. There’s no handshake this time, although she leans forward to kiss me on each cheek. Then she walks away through the now half-empty restaurant, out into the California sunshine, back to work.Matthew Garrahan is the FT’s Los Angeles correspondent