Tomb Raider - Cradle of Life, Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft Closed Butterfly Knife

original movie prop

This rubber stunt closed butterfly knife was custom-made for use by Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Jan de Bont's 2003 film Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.  In the film, Lara can be seen playing with the hero metal version of the knife while coordinating her next mission over the phone, and later pulling this safe pliable rubber closed version out of the rear waistband of her pants in order to threaten the henchman, Chen Lo, by stabbing him in the leg--though actually only slicing through his pants with a minor surface cut.  She then uses an open hard resin version as a throwing knife to kill Chen Lo, after he ignores her warning and tries to shoot her in the back.

Notably, Angelina Jolie is a long-time knife collector and enthusaist, who's demonstrated her skills with a butterfly knife on talk shows, shown off her own knife collection, and given knives as crew gifts and as gifts to some of her children who've taken an interest.  A bit of coincidental trivia is that veteran Hong Kong actor Simon Yam, who was stabbed as Chen Lo in this film, was actually stabbed onstage in real life at a public event (fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured).

This knife is made of a rubber compound which is highly flexible and safe for both Angelina Jolie to pull from her pants' waistband for the reveal shot, and for the next shots where she appears to use it to stab at Simon Yam's leg (in the scene, no blade is visible if one watches these shots frame-by-frame, just the handle as the knife is withdrawn from his leg). The rubber itself is more dense than a typical foam rubber, with the feel and smell of a soft tire rubber; therefore the material itself has survived in much better condition than a typical foam rubber would.  The rubber material is in overall excellent condition, with no noticeable deterioration.  The paint job however is in poor condition due to the flexible nature of the underlying rubber.  The outer layers have flaked off, leaving only the base gold-ish layer and parts of the next brown-ish layer, with large chips and streaks where all the paint is missing and the base black rubber is exposed.

This knife was part of Lot #458 in Propstore of London's December 2020 Live Auction; the original listing this was purchased from can be seen here:

https://propstoreauction.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/244/lot/66716/