Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie have reportedly had an under-the-radar rivalry for years — and now insiders are forecasting major fireworks as they’re set to lock horns for awards with their recent movies.
“This next Oscar season, they both want [the Best Actress prize], without question,” an insider exclusively tells In Touch. “Gaga’s convinced she’s hit it out of the park with Joker: Folie à Deux [where she plays opposite Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker’s love interest], and Angie’s purring about [Maria Callas biopic] Maria being one of the highlights of her career.”
The source notes that one “issue” between the actresses is Gaga’s friendship with Brad Pitt, because Angelina, 49, is “anything but” pals with her ex-husband, 60.
“The other thing to note is that both of their movies are full-on musical extravaganzas,” the insider continues, noting that Gaga, 38, “is doing her own singing in Joker while Angelina is getting some help from archival Maria Callas recordings.”
“But both movies are supposed to be Oscar bait and the handful of people who have seen finished versions are raving about them,” the source concludes. “The whole thing has the feel of two locomotives speeding toward each other. These are two extremely strong-willed people who hate to lose and love to fight uphill battles. But pitting them against each other is a recipe for disaster!”
Gaga and Angelina were previously rumored to have gone head-to-head for the role of Cleopatra in a film about the Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt herself in 2019. Elizabeth Taylor famously played the Egyptian queen in 1963, and there were big shoes to fill.
“Both will have to audition — a pretty rare ask of an A-list star,” a source told The Daily Star at the time of Gaga, who had just seen success with 2018’s A Star Is Born, and Angelina. “Whoever gets to play [Cleopatra] this time around [after Elizabeth] is going to enjoy an equally lofty perch in the motion picture industry.”
Though Gaga has not commented on vying for the role, Angelina told The Telegraph in 2011 that her own performance would “never be as lovely as Elizabeth’s.”
“We are trying to get into a different truth about her as a pharaoh in history and not as a sex symbol, because she really wasn’t … Even this idea of her having many lovers – it was possible that it was only two. She is very interesting, but she wasn’t a great beauty,” she said.
The 2019 iteration of Cleopatra was ultimately never made, but original screenwriter Brian Helgeland opened up about the project — and mentioned Angelina as the potential star — in an April interview with Inverse.
“I was the very first writer on Cleopatra when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which was almost made,” Brian, 63, told the publication. “It had elements of a political thriller with assassinations and sex, but it’s an epic that’s divided between her love affairs with Caesar and Marc Antony. Lots of true events surprised me when I was writing it.”
