(Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The author does not know Ms. Jolie.)
"Any time you're ready," the second-unit director called out. "Just let us know when."
Angelina Jolie nodded her head but said nothing. She blinked her ocean-blue eyes and pursed her pouty lips as her every action caused a stir throughout the set. She stared straight ahead, her long fingers resting on the knot of her white terrycloth robe, and took several quick breaths to steady herself. She had never been the kind of actress who shied away from nudity, as her turn in Gia could attest, but despite her reputation as something of a free spirit she would almost always find herself growing more and more nervous the closer she came to actually following through. Today was no different.
"Alright," she said, her accent going from her native American to British in mid-sentence. "Let's do this."
She exhaled and stepped out of her slippers, then untied her robe and let it fall to the floor.
She had been given the option of wearing pasties and flesh-colored panties, but decided against it out of fear it might clash with her style of acting. Now she was completely naked in front of her director and more than a dozen indispensable members of the technical crew, but instead of embarrassment at the cameras recording her every curve for posterity, she felt bolder and grew more arrogant the longer she remained uncovered. Because she was just that beautiful, that perfect--a trait she shared with her character Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider.
"Cameras rolling," the director said. "And action!"
Angelina walked gracefully up faux marble steps, hypnotizing the crew with the sway of her hips, and circled the open shower at the center of a working set. This was Lara's private bath in the film, and the shower was surrounded by opaque walls designed to show off her figure without allowing her private areas to be seen. It was a sop to the fans, as Lara Croft was quite well known for her impressive assets, but Angelina didn't mind. She had never gone out of her way to become a world-wide sex symbol, but neither had she tried to escape from it.
She stepped into the shower and turned on the water, testing it a moment before letting it go at full power. She turned away and faced the nearest camera, then tilted her head back and raked her fingers through her hair. She stuck out her chest and put one foot forward, adopting the pose that seemed to come naturally to the very beautiful but had been instilled in her when she was just a teenager forced to sell her model looks to help support the family. She and Simon had gone back and forth on the tone of the film, knowing full well it would be a hard PG-13 in the states, but he had insisted on filming nude scenes in the hope that the studio would let him put out a full-tilt action film once it came time to produce the DVD. That was his background, and as such he had always insisted a proper action movie needed lots of violence and lots of tits. Angelina, ever the good star, had quickly relented. His dream might never happen, but she wasn't about to be the one that crushed it. She had seen her father do that to her mother--coming by when he was drunk and brutally taking her while Angelina listened in the next room, treating her like his private whore before spitting in her face and telling her she was worthless--and she would rather die than inflict that kind of hurt on another human being.
She ran her hands over her body, not bothering to soap up or use shampoo as the point was to titillate the crowd, and moaned softly as she caressed her hard nipples and ran a hand between her long legs and touched her aroused sex. She could sense the others growing restless, could see them out of the corner of her eye giving each other curious looks, but she put that out of her mind and focused on the job at hand. There was no dialogue, no real meat to this section of the script: she had only to shower and look gorgeous doing it, something she could have done in her sleep--but she took it just as seriously as she would a scene of the utmost importance. An old-school actress at twenty-five, she didn't coast even when she knew she could.