Angelina Jolie Recalls Emotional Experience of Showing 'Unbroken' to Louis Zamperini on His Death Bed

Angelina Jolie wears a white coat and waves to the cameras while arriving at the Directors Guild Theatre for a screening of Unbroken on Wednesday evening (December 3) in New York City.

The 39-year-old actress/director spoke with press to recall the emotional moment she showed the movie to its subject Louis Zamperini on his death bed earlier this year.

“Louie was a part of the journey from the beginning. We’d call him sometimes and say ‘Does the raft look right,’ or, ‘Did you or did you not have a screwdriver?’ So he was always aware of it. But I hadn’t shown him the film. I was saving it,” Angelina said (via Vanity Fair). “But I found out that he’d gone into the hospital, so I had it downloaded on my laptop and I drove to the hospital and held it over him, like this, so he could see it.”

Click inside to find out what happened when she pressed play on the movie…

“And it’s hard to explain. How do you explain that moment? It wasn’t a judgment on a film and how well-acted or well-crafted it was. It was a man watching his life. It was a man at the end of his life, his extraordinary life�”this mountain of a man, with his physical strength, at 97 years old . . . I had to help him a glass of water, his legs were very, very thin�”watching himself run and win in the Olympics, watching his brother, watching his mother make gnocchi, watching all that he accomplished, all that he survived. And because he was a man of such strong faith, I think he was preparing himself, I know he was, preparing himself to die. And so he was also preparing himself to see his mother, and Phil, and Mac, and everybody. So it was hard to explain what it was. It was watching somebody relive all their experiences and prepare for that great, powerful, extraordinary, inspiring, long life to end.”