Angelina Jolie’s Most Successful Film: The One Where She Replaced Tom Cruise

Phillip Noyce’s 2010 spy thriller “Salt” is a corker of an action movie, with all the requisite thrills, fights, and plot twists that should come naturally to the genre. It’s not until you watch a film like “Salt” that you realize how poorly other spy films have done it. It’s that good. Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, an experienced CIA operative who has seen a lot of time in the field. At the beginning of the film, the CIA takes in a Russian defector and Evelyn is assigned to interrogate him. He reveals that there’s a secret Russian mole inside the CIA, stating that her name… is Evelyn Salt. Oh no!

Salt evades capture from her CIA colleagues and goes on the lam, hoping to clear her name. Does she have Russian sympathies or has she been wrongfully accused? There are many additional twists throughout, and I will leave them for you to discover. “Salt” is equal parts Alfred Hitchcock, James Bond, John le Carré, and “Mission: Impossible,” and it’s excellent. There’s even a scene where Salt has to disguise herself as a man to infiltrate a fancy-dress ball, and it works deliciously well. Jolie possesses an overwhelming suavity and can certainly hold her own with fights and stunts. What aren’t more blockbusters like this?

For a few steps during the film’s pre-production, however, it was a little too close to “Mission: Impossible.” The film’s original screenplay, written by Kurt Wimmer, detailed the adventures of a male protagonist named Edwin Salt, and, per a 2007 article in Variety, Tom Cruise was already circling the role.

According to Noyce, though, who was interviewed by Dark Horizons in 2009, the script was re-written (by Brian Helgelund) when Cruise refused to commit. Cruise was perhaps rightly concerned that Edwin Salt was a little too close to Ethan Hunt, a role he had already played three times by then.

Noyce described his near-miss with Cruise and even recalled having table reads of Wimmer’s script, including with an actor who was merely doing Noyce a favor, but who also might have been fun in the role:

“[W]e approached Tom Cruise. In the script by Kurt Wimmer, the part — which was later, played by Angelina Jolie — the character was called, at that time, Edwin A. Salt. We discussed the film with Tom, we had a table read with various actors, including Samuel L. Jackson, who kindly played one of the parts, just so we could hear the script read.” 

No, Jackson was never officially attached. 

It seems that the table read with him, though, was enough to make producers Amy Pascal and Ned Tullman to get excited about the film, and to pursue Cruise more doggedly. This was around 2008, though, and Cruise was already incredibly busy, working on films like “Tropic Thunder” and “Valkyrie.” He was also likely being approached by other producers about another spy-adjacent film, “Knight and Day,” which came out the same year as “Salt.” More so, though, Cruise didn’t like how similar Edwin Salt was to his “Mission: Impossible” character. As Noyce recalled: 

“After that table read, [Pascal and Tullman] decided they definitely wanted to make the film. It was then that –- you know, they just couldn’t get Tom to commit. He had many projects on the boil. Around the time that Tom wasn’t prepared to commit to the script as it was. I mean, his main fears were that the character was too close to Ethan Hunt, being a rogue spy, with extraordinary abilities. So over many months, we tried to twist and turn the story to differentiate the character of Edwin Salt from Ethan Hunt. But, you know, he had a valid point.”

Noyce figured Edwin Salt was almost like a first-cousin to Ethan Hunt, so he understood why Cruise would want to pass. 

At the same time these table reads were occurring, Amy Pascal was in touch with Angelina Jolie, merely because they liked discussing the possibility of a woman-led spy thriller, as there weren’t enough of them in the world. Pascal clicked the pieces together and found that Edwin Salt could easily become a female character with only a few tweaks. Noyce, Wimmer, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went to Jolie’s villa in the south of France (!) to have talks about “Salt.” The workshopping began, the gender of Edwin Salt was flipped, and their star was secured. As Noyce remembered it: 

“Over several days, three or four days, we discussed our mutual visions for what the film could be, and how, if a male character was to be turned into a female character, how that would be achieved. In that process, that process involved producing a script based on those discussions. Then that script being revised again by Brian Helgeland, who basically did a character pass, or dialogue pass on the film. But based on the script that came out of those discussions, Angelina committed.” 

Noyce noted that the script was actually being constantly workshopped and overhauled for years, which is very common with major Hollywood projects. He noted that the basic premise — that a CIA agent goes on the lam after being accused of being a Russian mole — always remained the same, although the script ended up being a lot more terse, grounded, and realistic than it had begun. Noyce noted that early drafts were broad and over-the-top. 

“Salt” is hardly realistic, of course, but it at least plays by the rules of a basic spy thriller. It’s also an extraordinarily good spy thriller. Some outlets have been trying to reassess and bolster the film and they should all be listened to. “Salt” is currently on Netflix and Apple TV+.

What do you think about this fascinating story? Share your thoughts in the comments below!