Angelina Jolie's Sons Were 'Professional' and 'Got the Respect' of Without Blood Crew, Says Salma Hayek Pinault (Exclusive)

Angelina Jolie's sons Maddox and Pax were hard workers on the set of mom's movie Without Blood.

Jolie, 49, wrote and directed the drama, about the aftermath of war, which stars Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir and has its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.

Behind the scenes, the two eldest of Jolie's six kids, Maddox, 23, and Pax, 20, worked in the assistant director department, which serves as the liaison between the director and other departments.

"They work hard," recalls Hayek Pinault, 58, at the PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly TIFF suite on Sept. 8. Seeing her longtime friend interact with Maddox and Pax at work, Hayek Pinault says Jolie was "very professional with them" on set.

"She's demanding. They got the respect of the crew, and they were good with the crew, and they were very in their place," the actress adds. "They were not treating me like they treat me outside of there. They were very, 'You have to come,' and I go, 'Okay!' It was kind of fun."

She adds of Maddox and Pax, "They work hard. They are very serious about what they do."

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At the start of filming, Hayek Pinault says she was playful toward Maddox and Pax.

"It is kind of funny, I was teasing them at the beginning, but then I had to say, 'No. I have to separate and just treat them like professionals because it's disrespectful,' " she recalls.

Her daughter Valentina, 16, with husband François-Henri Pinault, was also a presence on set, Hayek Pinault says, and having their kids around made the process "feel just so comfortable and lovely" while handling subject matter in which the characters "have to suffer so much." The actress describes the atmosphere on Jolie's set as feeling "like home."

She and Jolie starred together in the 2021 Marvel movie Eternals. About their dynamics, Hayek Pinault says, "In [Eternals] I was a little bit of a mother figure to her. In this movie, I felt like she was my motherly figure because she would come to the set and run it like a family."

"She was a very efficient mother, but she was also there emotionally every step of the way," Hayek Pinault adds.

Jolie recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about having Maddox and Pax on set with her, noting that they also worked doing assistant directing on her upcoming film Maria, directed by Pablo Larraín. "They’ve done that quite a few times, and I think that’s good for them. Pax tends to do stills and he gets brought in, and Pablo was wonderful and recognized that he was good at it."

She is also mom to Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, the latter of whom Jolie worked with on the Tony-winning producing team behind Broadway's The Outsiders.

"They’re a bit older, getting more independent. I’m less needed and so able to go away for different periods of time. And they’re old enough to join me at work," Jolie told THR. "It’s a new season in our lives. I’m very excited for them to be coming into their own more and more every day."