Media-savvy Angelina Jolie ducks gossip mags by carefully timing her mastectomy article
Angelina Jolie is the most savvy publicist in Hollywood.
The brave actress, who just revealed in a New York Times Op-Ed piece that she chose to undergo a preventive double mastectomy to lower her chances of breast cancer, planned her announcement meticulously.
Jolie, who has been beaten up by the weekly gossip magazines for years, released her story early Tuesday, causing In Touch, Life & Style, OK and Us Weekly to miss the biggest scoop since the “Girl Interrupted” Oscar winner stole Brad Pitt from Jennifer Aniston.
PHOTOS: ANGELINA JOLIE'S BEST MOMMY MOMENTS
“She knows the weeklies’ printing schedule,” one magazine insider tells Confidenti@l. “OK closes on a Thursday [the week before] so they had no chance. The others close on Monday night at midnight, so they were out.”
Our source explains that only People, the most powerful and respectable of the bunch, has the option to go back in on Tuesday morning to reprint the entire magazine — which is expensive, but worth it, when it is a story as big as Jolie’s.
After People spotted Jolie’s piece, the staff reworked the cover to feature the actress with the headline, “Inside Her Brave Choice.” Five pages of the glossy are dedicated to her story.
“People has been working with the same printing press forever and they never use the late option. They knew this was worth it,” says our source.
It is rare for the glossy to toss out a cover at the last minute. The most recent occasion was in April 2010, when Julia Roberts was bumped as People’s Most Beautiful cover girl for Sandra Bullock, who not only had announced filing for divorce from cheating hubby Jesse James, but said she had secretly adopted a baby boy.
In Jolie’s case, the mag had until 3 p.m. Tuesday to gather a story and bump the Ohio kidnapping victims as the lead story. The prior week, the cover featuring them sold over 1 million copies.
“She refuses to work with a publicist and knew if she broke it on a Monday, she’d be on the cover of the magazines she doesn’t like,” says our source.
“She’s not mad. She’s savvy. She’s winning the game here,” says the insider. “The New York Times also requested a full interview with her, but she wrote the Op-Ed so she’d have full control. Every word is her word and can’t be twisted or taken out of context. People has always been good to her.”
PITTSBURGH IS A CHLOE BLISSBURG
Chloe Sevigny fell in love with Pittsburgh while filming her new A&E series, “Those Who Kill.” “There are all these bridges and a beautiful river and the hills and there is all this beautiful architecture. It is a really exciting place,” she told us. “I went to some cool bars there. It is the least gentrified city I think I’ve visited in America for a long time. There is much to be discovered there.”
Speaking of bars, the actress, being photographed by the BLK DNM line’s creative director, Johan Lindeberg, at the launch of Absolut Elyx in the Meatpacking District, said her worst hangover happened after she mixed vodka with tequila.
“I had a really bad one in a hotel room in Manhattan many years ago,” she said. “I think I had alcohol poisoning. It was pretty torturous. I’d been at Mars bar the night before, so perhaps I picked up something else because that bar is pretty filthy.”
