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Angelina Jolie hopes moviegoers are as surprised by the twists in "Taking Lives" as she was when she made the thriller, directed by D.J. Caruso.

"In the script, one person you think you'd be following, and then they'd become the new person," she says. "I think I even said to D.J. at one point, 'I'm not sure who I'm having a sex scene with,' which was kind of fun."

In "Taking Lives," which co-stars Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez and Gena Rowlands and opens in theaters Friday, Jolie plays FBI profiler Illeana Scott, who is called in by the Montreal police chief (Tcheky Karyo) to help track down a serial killer. Illeana realizes that the killer has made a career of studying his victims and taking on their identities and lives after murdering them.

Jolie, 28, who looks surprisingly delicate in contrast with her screen persona, tells reporters that she chose "Taking Lives" because "it's an interesting type of character."

"I've met a lot of female cops and a lot of profilers and a lot of people that spend their lives focusing on these things that they have to take home with them and they have to digest," says Jolie, who previously played a cop tracking a serial killer in "The Bone Collector."

"And it tends to affect their personal lives.

... So I'm very interested in those kinds of women."

Profilers aren't a garden variety of law-enforcement officer, she says.

"In order to pass and actually become one with the FBI, your gut instinct has to have been right.

...You can't just volunteer. So there are clearly some people that... they smell things different; they see things different. They're just a little more in tune."

After starring in nearly 20 feature and television films, Jolie believes she can sense what roles to go after.

She can't recall any parts she lost that she really wanted, "... but there are certain roles I have done that I certainly wanted to do, and when I fought for them, I would have been crushed I didn't get them."

Aside from playing Lara in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" and its sequel, Jolie has tried not to repeat herself. She won an Oscar for best supporting actress as a mental patient in "Girl, Interrupted." She's played a fictitious TV journalist ("Life or Something Like It") and con woman ("Original Sin") as well as a real-life drugged-out supermodel ("Gia") and governor's wife ("George Wallace").

"I've never done anything thinking of how it would affect the perception of me, and thank God because I think that's a really unhealthy way to (run a career)," says Jolie, who has earned almost as much ink for her marriages and divorces from actors Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller as for her work.

"I just want to grow as a woman. I want to learn things about myself, so I tend to not repeat things.

. . I want to keep expanding and learn new things and explore new sides of myself so I can evolve properly," she says.

Lately, she says, she hasn't read any scripts that offer her a chance to grow.

"My son's starting school in September, so I'm thinking, am I going to evolve more as a woman sitting with my son and taking him to school and learning about being a mother or do I look for another movie?" says Jolie, who lives with adopted son Maddox in England. "And at this moment, I think I need to join the real world for a few months and evolve."

Not that Jolie will disappear from movie sets or screens any time soon. She is filming "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" with Brad Pitt through May. She makes a cameo appearance in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in June, provides a voice in "Shark Tale" in October and stars with Colin Farrell in Oliver Stone's "Alexander" in November.

Meanwhile, she's studying for her pilot's license and keeping busy with humanitarian projects through the United Nations.

She says her Third World concerns take up "quite a lot" of her time, though "not as much as I'd like them to."

"I had a few months off in between films, and I went to three different countries, and I continue to keep journals, and I have meetings. I'm going to Washington in May for a few days... In the meantime, while I'm working, I do a lot of just research and reading and kind of stay up to date."

She says it isn't hard to balance motherhood, an acting career and her humanitarian efforts.

"I feel very, very lucky that I've been fortunate to have that balance in my life because I think if I was just doing films, I would be probably - a few years ago, I was just doing films and I wasn't very happy, and I don't think that's enough of a life."