Angelina Jolie will Shoot Like a Girl in new war drama

She'll star as Afghanistan war hero Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar - who saved hundreds of lives flying Search and Rescue missions

Angelina Jolie is looking past the media furore over her personal life and towards her creative future, launching talks to star in the Afghanistan war drama Shoot Like a Girl.

Variety reports she's set to star in the cinematic adaptation of upcoming memoir Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front, which recounts the true story of Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot.

Hegar saved hundreds of lives both in her time flying Combat Search and Rescue, as well as Medevac, in Afghanistan; alongside working Civil Search and Rescue missions in California and out at sea. On her third tour to Afghanistan in 2009, she was shot down during a Medevac mission, though her actions saved the lives of her crew and patients, earning her the Purple Heart.

In 2012, Major Hegar filed a suit against the Secretary of Defense in protest at the Combat Exclusion Policy which kept female officers from serving in combat roles, with the policy being repealed in 2013 after being deemed unconstitutional.

Shoot Like a Girl marks Jolie's first action project since 2010's Salt, though it's been a genre that's marked so much of her cinematic career. Outside of 2014's Maleficent - and its sequel now in the works - she's largely focused on her humanitarian efforts and her directorial outpout; releasing 2015's By the Sea and 2014's Unbroken to mixed critical reception.