Angelina Jolie: My Cleopatra 'Performance Will Never Be as Lovely' as Elizabeth Taylor's

It's been rumored that Elizabeth Taylor had been against the remaking of her iconic movie Cleopatra with Angelina Jolie.

When asked by the U.K. Telegraph, Jolie demurs, "My performance will never be as lovely as Elizabeth's." PHOTOS: Elizabeth Taylor's most memorable roles

 "We are trying to get into a different truth about her as a pharaoh in history and not as a sex symbol, because she really wasn’t," adds Jolie, who currently stars in DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda 2.

"Even this idea of her having many lovers – it was possible that it was only two. She is very interesting, but she wasn’t a great beauty," says Jolie of the remake, which will be directed by The Social Network's David Fincher.

Jolie says that Cleopatra has "been very misunderstood."

"I thought it was all about the glamour, but then I read about her and she was a very strong mother, she spoke five languages and she was a leader," adds Jolie.

Johnny Depp, with whom she starred on The Tourist, called Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt the "the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of our era." Taylor and Burton met on the set of Cleopatra, which cost $44 million to make in 1963 -- the most expensive film of its time. PHOTOS: Elizabeth Taylor's many loves

When told of the observation, Jolie asks the Telegraph, "Did he really say that?"

"Well, I’ll take it as a compliment," she goes on. "When we made The Tourist we hung out constantly, although we were boring and just had play dates with the kids. [Depp’s son] Jack and Maddox played the computer the whole time."