Did you know that originally Tom Cruise was going to play Angelina Jolie’s part on the action-thriller, Salt?

That probably is the first time a woman has won an action role created with a man in mind. That’s how kick-ass Angelina is.

Kick-ass yet glamorous that is.

Angelina arrived at the Salt premiere last night, held at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater, hand in hand with the just-as-beautiful-and-glamorous-and-recently-clean-shaven-thank-God Brad Pitt.

Jolie was dressed in black strapless beaded cocktail minidress from Emporio Armani and sported Ferragamo shoes.

Salt is set for nationwide release July 23, 2010. For my review of Salt, click here.

Salt director Phillip Noyce told E! what he thought of changing the already penned male lead to female. “Well, Tom [Cruise] was never signed, but he was really thinking about it. We needed a start date, so we needed an actor. Amy Pascal, head of Sony Pictures, said ‘Let’s send it to Angelina.’ It seemed for a moment to be an outrageous idea! Then I thought about it and realized it only had pluses.”

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura told E!:

“It’s true that Amy Pascal had joked to [Angelina] about her being a Bond Girl one day and Angelina really said, ‘No I don’t want to be a Bond Girl. I want to be Bond.’ When it didn’t work out with Tom, this seemed like the movie to give her that shot. They’ve been talking about this notion for a while.”

Some photos courtesy of our field reporter and favorite comedian, Elham Jazzab.