• Angelina Jolie
• Before she became famous
• Music videos
• Movies
• International success
• Awards
• Humanitarian activities
• Relationships
• Children
• Filmography
• 10 things you must know about Angelina Jolie
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Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is an American film actress and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often named as one of the world’s most beautiful and sexiest women. Though being young, Jolie has already received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award. Jolie’s personal life is always in the spotlight.

Before she became famous

Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 4, 1975 to Oscar-winning actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. Jolie has a brother James Haven. She’s the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. She’s of Slovak and German origin on her father’s side and of French Canadian on her mother’s side. She is said to be part Iroquois, though her farther once claimed Bertrand is “not seriously Iroquois,” and that they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife’s exotic background.

Her parents separated in 1976, and Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother in Palisades, New York. As a child Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting. When she was 11, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. Other alumni of the Lee Strasberg Institute are Frank Miranda, Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Sally Field.

Jolie went to Beverly Hills High School (later Moreno High School), and later she recalled her feeling of isolation among the children of some of the area’s more affluent families. Jolie’s mother survived on a more modest income, and Jolie often wore second-hand clothes.

At school Angelina Jolie was teased by other students for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces. As a teen Jolie was experimenting and trying to find herself. She tried herself at modeling. Her first attempts proved unsuccessful. She started to cut herself; later commenting, “I collected knives and always had certain things around. For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.”

At 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director. During this period, she wore black, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother’s home, she returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school.

Music videos

At the age of 16 Jolie gave her modeling career another try. She worked as a professional model in London, New York and Los Angeles, and has also appeared in numerous music videos for such artists as Meat Loaf (’Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through’), Lenny Kravitz (’Stand by My Woman’), Antonello Venditti (’Alta Marea’) and The Lemonheads (’It’s About Time’). In 1997 Jolie also played a stripper in the Rolling Stones music video for the song ‘Anybody Seen My Baby?’

Movies

Early years

Though Angelina Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin’ to Get Out, Jolie’s acting career began in early 1990s with the low budget production of Cyborg 2 (1993). Angelina played Casella “Cash” Reese, a near-human robot, designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer’s headquarters and then self-detonate. Before doing Cyborg, Jolie had also acted in five student films for the USC School of Cinema, all directed by her brother, James Haven. Though being estranged from her father Jon Voight Angelina began to learn from him, as she noticed, his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both “drama queens”.

Jolie’s most prominent role during early years of her career was as Kate “Acid Burn” Libby in her first Hollywood picture, Hackers (1995), where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller. The New York Times wrote, “Kate (Angelina Jolie) stands out. That’s because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits intently at her keyboard in a see-through top. Despite her sullen posturing, which is all this role requires, Ms. Jolie has the sweetly cherubic looks of her father, Jon Voight.” The movie failed to make a profit at the box-office, but developed a cult after the release.

Her next film was 1996 comedy Love Is All There Is, a modern-day loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set among two rival Italian family restaurant owners in the Bronx, New York.

In the road movie Mojave Moon she was a youngster, named Eleanor Rigby, who falls for Danny Aiello (The Shoemaker), while he takes a shine to her mother, Anne Archer.

Another small movie that got her good notices was Foxfire (1996), Jolie played Margret “Legs” Sadovsky, one of five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond in the film after they beat up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. The Los Angeles Times wrote about Jolie’s performance, “It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst.”

In 1997, Jolie starred with David Duchovny (The X-Files) in the thriller Playing God, a film about a surgeon who lost his medical license and is hired by guys from criminal world to do operations on wounded Mafiosi. Jolie’s character, Claire, is girlfriend of one of the criminals. The movie was not received, and the reviews noted that “Angelina Jolie seems too nice to be [a criminal's] girlfriend”.

The same year she appeared in the TV movie True Women, a historical romantic drama set in the West, and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle.

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Getting famous

George Wallace (1997) won Jolie a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination. George Wallace is a biopic highly praised by critics. Angelina Jolie played the second wife of the segregationist Governor of Alabama who was shot and paralyzed while running for President.

In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO’s Gia as supermodel Gia Carangi. This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, depicting a world of sex, drugs and emotional drama. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS at the age of 26. Vanessa Vance from Reel.com noted, “Angelina Jolie is fierce in her portrayal — filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperate.”

In accordance with Lee Strasberg’s method of acting Jolie reportedly preferred to stay in character in between scenes during many of her early films, and as a result had gained a reputation for being difficult to deal with. So while shooting Gia, she told her then-husband Jonny Lee Miller that she wouldn’t be able to phone him. “I’d tell him: ‘I’m alone; I’m dying; I’m gay; I’m not going to see you for weeks.”

Jolie stopped acting for a while after shooting Gia, because she felt that she had “nothing else to give.” During this time she enrolled at New York University to study filmmaking and attended writing classes.

Jolie returned as Gloria McNeary in the 1998 gangster movie Hell’s Kitchen, and later that year appeared in Playing by Heart, as part of an ensemble all-star cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe and Jon Stewart. The film received predominantly positive reviews and Jolie was praised in particular.

In 1998, she starred in the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, co-starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Jolie played Thornton’s seductive wife. The film received a lukewarm reception from critics, and Jolie’s character was particularly criticized. While shooting Pushing Tin, Jolie started dating her co-star Billy Bob Thornton and then married him on May 5, 2000.

Next year Jolie joined Denzel Washington (Training Day) in The Bone Collector, an adapted crime novel written by Jeffery Deaver. Jolie played Amelia Donaghy, a police officer haunted by her cop father’s suicide, who reluctantly helps Washington track down a serial killer. The movie grossed $151 million worldwide, but was a critical failure: “Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast.” (Detroit Free Press)

Jolie starred in Girl, Interrupted (1999), a film that tells the story of mental patient Susanna Kaysen, and which was adapted from Kaysen’s original memoir Girl, Interrupted. Jolie played the sociopathic Lisa Rowe while Winona Ryder (Autumn in New York) played the main character. This film was a real triumph for Angelina and brought her an Oscar.

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International success

In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer blockbuster, Gone in 60 Seconds, in which she played Sarah “Sway” Wayland, ex-girlfriend of car-thief Randall “Memphis” Raines (Nicolas Cage). The role was small, and Angelina later explained that the film was a welcome relief after the heavy role of Lisa Rowe. And Gone in 60 Seconds became her highest grossing movie up until then, earning $237 million internationally.

In 2001 Jolie starred alongside Antonio Banderas as the mail-order bride Julia Russell in the thriller Original Sin. The story was a major critical failure. “The story plunges more precipitously than Ms. Jolie’s neckline,” The New York Times noted about the film.

In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The movie was an adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider videogame. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. Jolie was required to master a British accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara Croft. Jolie performed all her own stunts in the film and even received cuts from the chandelier scene as a result. She also set fire to her silk pajamas on the chandelier while she was doing her “bungee jumps” in the house. She was taken to a hospital with minor burns but continued filming the next day.

Thanks to the flick, Jolie achieved international fame and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. Angelina was praised for her physical performance, but the movie received mostly negative reviews. Nonetheless, the movie was a huge international success, earning $275 million worldwide. Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life in 2003.

It wasn’t an easy period in Jolie’s life. The thing is that she’d been long estranged from her farther Oscar winning actor Jon Voight, though reconciliation was attempted, and he appeared with her in Lara Croft. In July 2002, Jolie filed a request to legally change her name to “Angelina Jolie”, dropping Voight as her surname; the name change was made official on September 12, 2002. Jolie later indicated that she no longer wished to pursue a relationship with her father, and said, “My father and I don’t speak. I don’t hold any anger toward him. I don’t believe that somebody’s family becomes their blood. Because my son’s adopted, and families are earned.”

The only movie Jolie did in 2002 was Life or Something Like It. She played Lanie Kerrigan, an ambitious TV reporter who is told that she will die in a week. Jolie’s performance received positive reviews. “Jolie is excellent in her role. This Academy Award-winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life,” CNN’s Paul Clinton wrote in his review.

In 2003 Jolie starred in Beyond Borders, a film about aid workers in Africa. The dramatic film parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie’s images were too depressingly realistic making the film unpopular with critics and viewers.

In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan Hawke in the thriller Taking Lives, as an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The movie received mixed reviews and The Hollywood Reporter concluded, “Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour.”

Jolie also had a brief appearance in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a science fiction adventure film, and then played Olympias in Alexander (2004), Oliver Stone’s biopic about the life of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). The film was a failure domestically but a success internationally.

This same year Jolie also provided the voice of Lola, an angelfish in the animated DreamWorks movie Shark Tale. The star-studded cast included Will Smith, Martin Scorsese, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black and Robert De Niro.

Jolie’s only movie of 2005, the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is also her biggest commercial success to date that also made her the third actress to join the $20 Million Club (after Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz), as that’s the amount of money she got for the flick.

The film tells the story of a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. Jolie starred as Jane Smith, while Brad Pitt starred as John Smith. “While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars’ thermonuclear screen chemistry,” The Star Tribune wrote. The movie earned over $478 million worldwide, and became one of the biggest hits of 2005.

Jolie’s only film in 2006 was Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, telling the early history of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon, The Bourne Ultimatum). Jolie played Wilson’s neglected wife.

In 2007, Jolie made her directorial debut with the documentary A Place in Time, which captures the life in 27 locations around the globe during a single week and features fellow actors such as Jude Law, Hilary Swank, Colin Farrell and Jonny Lee Miller. The film was intended to be distributed through the National Education Association, mainly in high schools.

Jolie also starred as Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart (2007), about the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. The movie is based on Mariane Pearl’s memoirs A Mighty Heart and had its premiere at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival. Jolie’s performance was described as “well-measured and moving”.

Jolie also played in Robert Zemeckis’ animated epic Beowulf (2007), which was created through the motion capture technique. The film featured her as Grendel’s mother.

Year 2007 was a difficult one in Jolie’s life. There were good and bad things happening to her. The year started with a major family tragedy. Jolie’s mother Marcheline Bertrand died from ovarian cancer on January, 27, 2007 after more than 7 years of battle with the disease. Though having difficult times, Jolie didn’t give up her humanitarian missions and filming career.

Three Jolie’s movies premiere this year. Jolie has already premiered the DreamWorks animated movie Kung Fu Panda and Clint Eastwood’s drama Changeling at the 2008 Cannes International Film Festival this May. The action flick Wanted, in which Jolie stars as a sexy and wild assassin, opened worldwide on June, 27.

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Awards

George Wallace (1997) won Jolie a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination. The film, among other awards, received the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries/Motion Picture made for TV.

In 1998 Jolie won another Golden Globe award and another Emmy nomination for her performance in Gia, and she additionally earned a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Girl, Interrupted (1999), besides fame and recognition, brought Angelina her third Golden Globe, her second Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Variety noted, “Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna’s rehabilitation.” Jolie’s role is said to be reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar.

Girl, Interrupted made Jolie one of the first actresses to win 3 consecutive Golden Globes in 3 different categories: “Best Supporting Actress in a Mini Series”: George Wallace (1997), “Best Actress in a TV Movie or Mini Series”: Gia (1998), “Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture”: Girl, Interrupted (1999). Coincidentally, all her roles were based on real people.

A Mighty Heart (2007) based on Mariane Pearl’s memoirs, earned Jolie her fourth Golden Globe and her third Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

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Humanitarian activities

Angelina Jolie’s humanitarian activities started in 2001 during filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in poverty-stricken and widely mined Cambodia. Jolie considered being there an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. She turned to UNHCR for more information on international trouble spots. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, Jolie went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. In the coming months she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and later met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan where she donated $1 million for Afghan refugees in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal. She insisted on covering all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits.

Later that year, on August 27, Angelina Jolie was formally appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book Notes from My Travels (2003) whose profits go to UNHCR.

In a press conference Jolie explained her motives for joining the refugee agency: “We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don’t believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us.”

Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. According to her own words, she devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity.

Later in 2003 Jolie was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award from the UN’s Correspondents’ Association for her work as a Goodwill Ambassador with the UNHCR. In August 2005 Jolie was made an official citizen of Cambodia by the King for her ongoing efforts to help the environment there. Angelina’s first adopted child, Maddox, comes from Cambodia.

She started spending more time on her humanitarian missions. As a Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie visited Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand and Colombian refugees in Ecuador to take a closer look at the “Western Hemisphere’s most severe humanitarian crisis” in 2002. She also went to various UNHCR facilities in Kosovo as well as to Sudan refugee camp in Kenya.

While filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia she met with Angolan refugees as a UNHCR Ambassador. This year the star also visited Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Russia’s North Caucasus, Jordan to visit Iraqi refugees there, and Egypt to meet Sudanese refugees.
Also in 2004, Jolie had her first U.N. trip within the United States. She went to Arizona to visit detained asylum seekers and unaccompanied children in Phoenix. She also flew to Chad in June, and then four months later she returned to the region, this time going directly into West Darfur.

In 2005, Jolie visited Pakistani camps containing Afghan refugees, and met with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz as a part of her Goodwill Ambassador mission. She visited Pakistan twice that year, coming with Brad Pitt during the Thanksgiving weekend.

In 2005 she also took part at a National Press Club luncheon, where she announced the founding of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal-aid to asylum-seeking children with no legal representation, which Jolie personally funded with a donation of $500,000 for its first two years. Jolie also spoke for several bills to aid refugees and vulnerable children in the Third World.

In addition to her political involvement, Jolie began using her public profile to promote humanitarian causes through the mass media. She filmed a MTV special, The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, portraying her and noted economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on a trip to a remote group of villages in Western Kenya.

Jolie kept on receiving wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2005 she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA (The United Nations Association of the United States of America). Jolie has pledged $5 million to set up a wildlife sanctuary in the north-western province of Battambang.

In 2006, Jolie announced the founding of the Jolie/Pitt Foundation which made initial donations to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders of $1 million each. Jolie also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, founded at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006, which helps fund education programs for children affected by conflict.

Jolie continued the tradition of spending holidays on humanitarian trips and spent Christmas Day 2006 with Colombian refugees in San José, Costa Rica where she handed out presents. Besides, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt donated all the money they gained for daughter Shiloh’s first pictures to charity. And Shiloh’s pics total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide – making them the most expensive celebrity images of all time.

In 2007, Jolie returned to Chad for a two-day mission to assess the deteriorating security situation for refugees from Darfur; Jolie and Pitt subsequently donated $1 million to three relief organizations in Chad and Darfur. Jolie also made her first visit to Syria and Iraq, where she met with Iraqi refugees as well as multi-national forces and U.S. troops.

This year Jolie became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee. With increasing experience, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on a political level.

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Relationships

Jolie met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller while doing Hackers in 1995. It’s worth noting that Jolie’s marriage to Miller was anything but ordinary. They married on March 28, 1996. She attended her wedding in black leather pants and a white shirt, upon which she had written the groom’s name in her blood. The couple separated the following year and divorced on February 3, 1999. Jolie and Miller still remain on good terms. “It comes down to timing. I think he’s the greatest husband a girl could ask for. I’ll always love him, we were simply too young.” Jolie said on her ex husband later.

In 1998, she starred in the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, co-starring Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie played his seductive wife. While shooting Pushing Tin, Jolie started dating Billy Bob and then married him on May 5, 2000. She became his fifth wife, and he was 20 years her senior. The couple publicly declared their love and passion to one another most famously wearing one another’s blood in vials around their necks. They were the most popular high-profile couple those days. Jolie and Thornton divorced on May 27, 2003.

“It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it’s scary but… I think it can happen when you get involved and you don’t know yourself yet.” Jolie stated in Vogue about the divorce. When still married to Thornton, Jolie adopted a Cambodian baby boy, named Maddox, now 6. He was her first adopted child.

Jolie met her present partner Brad Pitt while shooting Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 2005. The film was well received and was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. “To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife,” the actress commented on the rumors.

Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston (Friends) in January 2005 and was frequently seen in public with Jolie the following months. Pitt’s divorce was finalized later in 2005. But neither Jolie, nor Pitt made any official statement about their relationship up to January 2006 when Angelina Jolie announced they would have a child together. Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt on May 27, 2006 in Namibia, Africa. The government in Namibia has offered citizenship to her daughter.

The name “Brangelina”, referring to Jolie and Pitt, was created by entertainment media in 2005 when they were often seen together but still didn’t confirm their relationship.