Angelina Jolie blinked back tears today as she told journalists in London that her role in new film Changeling reminded her of her late mother.

The actress, visiting the UK to promote the Clint-Eastwood directed movie which opens next week, said her character, whose son goes missing, was similar to her actress mother Marcheline Bertrand, who died from cancer in 2007.

Tears welled in Jolie’s eyes and her voice broke as she remembered her mother: “She was very much Christine Collins. She was very sweet and she would never get angry and she would never swear, but when it came to her kids she was fierce, so this was very much her story.”

The mother-of-six also confirmed that she was winding down her acting career. “I’m not making some retirement announcement but I have a big family and a lot of responsibility at home.”

The actress, who brought her four-month-old twins to London with her, said she planned to make a movie every one to two years and imagined she would eventually step away from the film industry.

Despite her glamorous image as one half of a Hollywood super couple, Jolie, whose partner is Brad Pitt, told journalists that she had spent much of the past year at home in her pyjamas colouring in with her children.

Motherhood meant she almost turned down Changeling, already being tipped as an Oscar contender, as she found the idea of re-enacting the true story of Christine Collins too harrowing. Collins’ son went missing in 1928. Corrupt police then returned a boy that wasn’t hers, insisting he was her missing son and throwing her into a psychiatric hospital when she disputed his identity.

“When I first read the script I couldn’t put it down and then I said no immediately. I didn’t want to go near this story.”

But Jolie, who won an Oscar in 2000 for Girl Interrupted, said she was unable to stop thinking about Collins’ plight, which ended in a damning enquiry into the Los Angeles Police Department.

“I found it very inspiring in the end. I really wanted people to know about her as an extra piece of justice.

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