Angelina Jolie was ‘demanding’ with sons Maddox and Pax on set of her movie Without Blood, says star Salma Hayek: ‘They work hard’

Angelina Jolie is helping her kids get into the family business, but that doesn’t mean she lets them off easy at work. 

The Oscar winner, 49, hired her sons Maddox, 23, and Pax, 20, who is recovering from an e-bike crash, to work on the set of Without Blood in the assistant director department. 

The AD department serves as a liaison between the director and other departments.  

‘They work hard,’ star Salma Hayek, 58, told People at the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, adding that the director was ‘very professional with them’ on the 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 Academy Award nominee explained.

‘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.’

 ‘They work hard. They are very serious about what they do.’

Hayek and Jolie worked together on 2021’s Eternals and became friends.

The Mexican-born beauty said she had to adjust to the way she interacted with the boys on set.

‘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 explained. 

Pax had recovered enough from his recent e-bike accident to join his mom of the red carpet. Maddox did not attend the festival.  

Without Blood is a ‘parable-like tale of family, war, and revenge’ according to the TIFF synopsis. 

‘In a frontier landscape at the beginning of the 20th century, gunmen descend on a remote farmhouse, determined to exact revenge. Their target, a doctor — alone with his son and daughter — tries desperately to protect his children. Inevitably, bullets fly.’ 

‘She’s demanding,’ Hayek said of Jolie as a director, adding Maddox and Pax ‘got the respect of the crew, and they were good with the crew, and they were very in their place’    (Pictured in Toronto on September 8)

 Pax was recovered enough from his e-bike accident in Los Angeles to join his mom for her big night. Maddox did not attend (Pictured with Rutger Joedemaekers, Lorenzo De Maio, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Patricio Jose, Demian Bichir and Juan Gervasio in Toronto on September 8)

Hayek said there was a bit of a role reversal with Jolie during the making of the film. 

‘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,’ the actress explained.

She was a very efficient mother, but she was also there emotionally every step of the way.’ 

Hayek’s daughter, Valentina, 16, whom she shares with husband François-Henri Pinault, was on the set as well, which the doting mom said made the shoot ‘feel just so comfortable and lovely.’