Coming out this week is the action-packed spy thriller 'Salt,' starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband, or the world's most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence.

Ejiofor plays Peabody, a CIA counterintelligence officer.

The lead role was written for Tom Cruise, who was initially attached to play Edwin Salt. After Jolie came on board, though, a bit of gender switching was all it took to get the script ready for a female protagonist.

Black Voices caught up with Jolie and Chiwetel in Washington, D.C., as they promoted the film and talked about working together for the first time.

When you first read the script was it already modified to be Evelyn Salt?

Angelina Jolie: No. I got a call that said, "We've got a movie for you and your name is Edwin and you have a wife."

Can you talk then about how you worked to develop that and change it?

AJ: Well, the big transition we made was that Salt originally had a wife and child and in the end he was able to tell them, "I love you." This was the big arc. I said that wasn't something that would be surprising for a woman to say. And I don't think this woman would have a child. So the first thing we had to do was find a way to have this relationship with a husband or a wife that was very different. What would you not expect a woman to do? What would be unusual? That was the first thing, and then once we decided what we were going to do, it was how we were going to make that work in the movie.

Chiwetel Ejiofor: The script changed in a number of different ways as a result of the gender change. If a man is trying to save his wife, it's different than when a woman is trying to save her husband. And trying to delineate what those differences are is quite complicated, but it's about our expectations for the character.

Chiwetel, having done your fair share of political thrillers, I take it you love the genre?

CE: I guess I'm interested in stuff like this. I'm interested in these concepts of intrigue, spies, paranoia and politics. It's fascinating. What happens behind closed doors and what decisions are being made? With this film, I was specifically interested in these ideas of paranoia, and this seemed like a good basis for that -- people being sleeper cells for a decade or so. Who knew it would be quite so relevant now?

Have you been following what's been happening in the world with those Russian spies who were caught?

CE: Yeah, I saw it all come out in the papers like 10 days ago. Although I had spoken to people who were members of the CIA while filming, they concluded that there was something that wasn't far-fetched about the storyline.

AJ: We did well. It was a good marketing department.

How did you prepare for your role?

AJ: [Stunt coordinator] Simon Crane's thing with me is always, "Are you read to suffer?" I say, "Yes, sir." I call him Dr. Crane because he always fixes everything. He said, "You have to be meaner. You have to stop being so elegant when you fight. You can't be long in your kicks because this is real now. So that would be pretty, but this can't be pretty." So he was pretty hard on me all through it. If my posture was too hard or whatever it was, he would just laugh at me and make me start over and do it tougher.

CE: Well, I just spoke to people in the CIA. I was very interested in the interdepartmental aspects of intelligence and whether there were any tension between counterintelligence and agents in the field and what were the dividing points.

Angelina, what sort of collaboration came about in working with Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel?

AJ: It's so hard to talk about it without giving away the movie. They're all extraordinary actors. The man who played my husband is an extraordinary German actor. Daniel [Pearce] was extraordinary, and so was the guy who played the Russian. The nice thing about this kind of film is that sometimes in these action movies, there's not enough great characters. This one had had really strong characters. It was such a pleasure to have these very real scenes and very deep relationships with each one of them. Instead of the action movies I've done where it's been really about that, in this I got to do that really great scene work. I just think the world of all of them. It was really fun also because when you see the film, the relationships just change a lot; they morph. So we had fun with that because one day we'd be one thing to each other and the next we'd be something else.