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Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie
Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress. She has received three
Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award.
Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted
for her work with refugees as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has been cited as one of the
world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported.
Though she 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
earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her
first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in
the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia
(1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her
performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved wider
fame after her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft:
Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the
best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She has had her
biggest commercial successes with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith
(2005) and the animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008).
Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie
currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted
worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children,
Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as three biological children, Shiloh,
Knox, and Vivienne.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon
Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of
James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian
Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of Czechoslovak and German descent,
and on her mother's side she is French Canadian and is said to be part
Iroquois. However, Voight has claimed Bertrand was "not seriously
Iroquois", and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife's exotic
background.
After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother were raised
by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to
Palisades, New York. As a child, Jolie regularly saw movies with her
mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting;
she had not been influenced by her father. When she was eleven years old,
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.
At the age of 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of
becoming a funeral director. During this period, she wore black clothing,
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, though in recent times she
has referred to this period with the observation, "I am still at heart—and
always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos".
She later recalled her time as a student at Beverly Hills High School
(later Moreno High School), and 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. She was teased by other students who also targeted her for her
distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses
and braces. Her self-esteem was further diminished when her initial
attempts at modeling 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."
Jolie has been long estranged from her father. The two tried to reconcile
and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). 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. In August of the same year, Voight claimed that his
daughter had "serious mental problems" on Access Hollywood. 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." She stated that she
did not want to publicize her reasons for her estrangement from her
father, but because she had adopted her son, she did not think it was
healthy for her to associate with Voight.
Jolie began working as a fashion model when she was 14 years old, modeling
mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. At that time she also appeared
in numerous music videos, including those of Meat Loaf ("Rock & Roll
Dreams Come Through"), Antonello Venditti ("Alta Marea"), Lenny Kravitz
("Stand by My Woman"), and The Lemonheads ("It's About Time"). At the age
of 16, Jolie returned to theatre and played her first role as a German
dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, 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 appeared in five of her brother's student films, made while he
attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but her professional movie
career began in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the
low-budget film Cyborg 2, as Casella "Cash" Reese, a near-human robot,
designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer's headquarters and
then self-detonate. Following a supporting role in the independent film
Without Evidence, Jolie starred 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 following
after its video release.
She appeared as Gina Malacici in the 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 (1996) she was a youngster, named Eleanor Rigby, who falls for
Danny Aiello's character, while he takes a shine to her mother, played by
Anne Archer. In 1996, Jolie also portrayed Margret "Legs" Sadovsky, one of
five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond in the film Foxfire after
they beat up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. The Los Angeles
Times wrote about her performance, "It took a lot of hogwash to develop
this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight's knockout daughter, 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 in the thriller Playing God,
set in the Los Angeles underworld. The movie was not received well by
critics and Roger Ebert noted that "Angelina Jolie finds a certain warmth
in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice
to be a criminal's girlfriend, and maybe she is." She then appeared in the
television movie True Women, a historical romantic drama set in the
American West, and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle. That year she
also appeared in the music video for "Anybody Seen My Baby?" by the
Rolling Stones.
Jolie's career prospects began to improve after her performance as
Cornelia Wallace in the 1997 biographical film George Wallace for which
she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Gary
Sinise starred as Alabama Governor George Wallace. The film, directed by
John Frankenheimer, was praised by critics and, among other awards,
received the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries/Motion Picture made for TV.
She played the second wife of the former segregationist governor who was
shot and paralyzed while running in 1972 for U.S. President.
In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO's Gia, portraying supermodel Gia Carangi.
The film depicted a world of sex, drugs and emotional drama, and
chronicled the destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her
drug addiction, and her decline and death from AIDS. Vanessa Vance from
Reel.com noted, "Angelina Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as
the titular Gia, and it's easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her
portrayal—filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation—and her role
in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever
filmed." For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe Award
and was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also won her first Screen Actors
Guild Award. In accordance with Lee Strasberg's method 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. While shooting Gia, she told her then-husband
Jonny Lee Miller that she would not 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.'"
Following Gia, Jolie moved to New York and stopped acting for a short
time, because she felt that she had "nothing else to give". She enrolled
at New York University to study filmmaking and attended writing classes.
She described it as "just good for me to collect myself" on Inside the
Actors Studio.
Jolie returned to film as Gloria McNeary in the 1998 gangster movie Hell's
Kitchen, and later that year appeared in Playing by Heart, part of an
ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe
and Jon Stewart. The film received predominantly positive reviews and
Jolie was praised in particular. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote,
"Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the
desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to
gamble." Jolie won the Breakthrough Performance Award by the National
Board of Review.
In 1999, she starred in Mike Newell's comedy-drama Pushing Tin,
co-starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Jolie
played Thornton's seductive wife. The film received a mixed reception from
critics and Jolie's character was particularly criticized. The Washington
Post wrote, "Mary (Angelina Jolie), a completely ludicrous writer's
creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die,
wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends
entire nights away from home." She then worked with Denzel Washington in
The Bone Collector (1999), 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. The Detroit Free Press concluded, "Jolie, while always delicious
to look at, is simply and woefully miscast."
Jolie next took the supporting role of the sociopathic Lisa Rowe in Girl,
Interrupted (1999), a film that tells the story of mental patient Susanna
Kaysen, and which was adapted from Kaysen's original memoir of the same
name. While Winona Ryder played the main character in what was hoped to be
a comeback for her, the film instead marked Jolie's final breakthrough in
Hollywood. She won her third Golden Globe Award, her second Screen Actors
Guild Award and an Academy Award 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".
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 Nicolas Cage. The role was small, and the Washington Post
criticized that "all she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down,
modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively
around her teeth." She later explained that the film was a welcome relief
after the heavy role of Lisa Rowe, and it became her highest grossing
movie up until then, earning $237 million internationally.
Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Jolie's films to date
had often not appealed to a wide audience, but Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
(2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular
Tomb Raider videogame, Jolie was required to learn a British accent and
undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara
Croft. She was generally praised for her physical performance, but the
movie generated mostly negative reviews. Slant Magazine commented,
"Angelina Jolie was born to play Lara Croft but director Simon West makes
her journey into a game of Frogger." The movie was an international
success nonetheless, earning $275 million worldwide, and launched her
global reputation as a female action star.
Jolie then starred opposite Antonio Banderas as the mail-order bride Julia
Russell in Original Sin (2001), a thriller based on the novel Waltz into
Darkness by Cornell Woolrich. The film was a major critical failure, with
The New York Times noting, "The story plunges more precipitously than Ms.
Jolie's neckline." In 2002, she played Lanie Kerrigan in Life or Something
Like It, a film about an ambitious TV reporter who is told that she will
die in a week. The film was poorly received by critics, though Jolie's
performance received positive reviews. CNN's Paul Clinton wrote, "Jolie is
excellent in her role. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the
middle of the film, this Academy Award–winning actress is exceedingly
believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of
fulfilling life."
Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The
Cradle of Life in 2003. The sequel, while not as lucrative as the
original, earned $156 million at the international box-office. Later that
year Jolie starred in Beyond Borders, a film about aid workers in Africa.
Although reflecting Jolie's real-life interest in promoting humanitarian
relief, the film was critically and financially unsuccessful. The Los
Angeles Times wrote, "Jolie, as she did in her Oscar-winning role in Girl,
Interrupted, can bring electricity and believability to roles that have a
reality she can understand. She can also, witness the Lara Croft films, do
acknowledged cartoons. But the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly
written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world,
completely defeats her."
In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan Hawke in the thriller Taking Lives.
She portrayed Illeana Scott, 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." She also provided the voice
of Lola, an angelfish in the animated DreamWorks movie Shark Tale (2004)
and she had a brief appearance in Kerry Conran's Sky Captain and the World
of Tomorrow (2004), a science fiction adventure film shot with actors
entirely in front of a bluescreen. Also in 2004, Jolie played Olympias in
Alexander, Oliver Stone's biographical film about the life of Alexander
the Great. The film failed domestically, with Stone attributing its poor
reception to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but
it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139 million outside the
United States.
Jolie's only movie in 2005 was the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The
film, directed by Doug Liman, tells the story of a bored married couple
who find out that they are both secret assassins. Jolie starred as Jane
Smith opposite Brad Pitt. The film received mixed reviews, but was
generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads. The Star Tribune
noted, "While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious
charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry."
The movie earned $478 million worldwide, one of the biggest hits of 2005.
She next appeared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006), a film
about the early history of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edward
Wilson, played by Matt Damon. Jolie played the supporting role of Margaret
Russell, Wilson's neglected wife. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Jolie
ages convincingly throughout, and is blithely unconcerned with how her
brittle character is coming off in terms of audience sympathy."
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. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and is
intended to be distributed through the National Education Association,
mainly in high schools. Jolie 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 picture is based on Mariane Pearl's memoirs A Mighty Heart
and had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter
described Jolie's performance as "well-measured and moving", played "with
respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent." The film earned her a
fourth Golden Globe Award and a third Screen Actors Guild Award
nomination. Jolie also played Grendel's mother in Robert Zemeckis'
animated epic Beowulf (2007) which was created through the motion capture
technique.
Jolie co-starred alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the 2008
action movie Wanted, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Mark Millar. The
film received predominately favorable reviews and proved to be an
international success, earning $342 million worldwide. She also provided
the voice of Master Tigress in the DreamWorks animated movie Kung Fu Panda
(2008). With revenue of $632 million internationally, it became her
highest grossing film to date. The same year, Jolie played Christine
Collins, the lead in Clint Eastwood's drama Changeling (2008), which had
its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. It is based on the true story of
a woman in 1928 Los Angeles who is reunited with her kidnapped son—only to
realize he is an impostor. Jolie received her second Academy Award
nomination, and also was nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe
Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. The Chicago Tribune noted,
"Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, the scenes when one
patronizing male authority figure after another belittles her at their
peril."
Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while
filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia. She eventually turned to UNHCR for more
information on international trouble spots. In the following months she
visited refugee camps around the world to learn more about the situation
and the conditions in these areas. 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. Jolie was
named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters
in Geneva.
Jolie has been on field missions around the world and met with refugees
and internally displaced persons in more than 20 countries. Asked what she
hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people.
I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked
down upon." In 2002, Jolie visited the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand
and Colombian refugees in Ecuador. Jolie later went to various UNHCR
facilities in Kosovo and paid a visit to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya with
refugees mainly from Sudan. She also met with Angolan refugees while
filming Beyond Borders in Namibia.
In 2003, Jolie embarked on a six-day mission to Tanzania where she
traveled to western border camps hosting Congolese refugees, and she paid
a week-long visit to Sri Lanka. She later concluded a four-day mission to
Russia as she traveled to North Caucasus. Concurrently with the release of
her movie Beyond Borders she published Notes from My Travels, a collection
of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001–2002).
During a private stay in Jordan in December 2003 she asked to visit Iraqi
refugees in Jordan's eastern desert and later that month she went to Egypt
to meet Sudanese refugees.
On her first U.N. trip within the United States, Jolie went to Arizona in
2004, visiting detained asylum seekers at three facilities and the
Southwest Key Program, a facility for unaccompanied children in Phoenix.
She flew to Chad in June 2004, paying a visit to border sites and camps
for refugees who had fled fighting in western Sudan's Darfur region. Four
months later she returned to the region, this time going directly into
West Darfur. Also in 2004, Jolie met with Afghan refugees in Thailand and
on a private stay to Lebanon during the Christmas holidays, she visited
UNHCR's regional office in Beirut, as well as some young refugees and
cancer patients in the Lebanese capital.
In 2005, Jolie visited Pakistani camps containing Afghani refugees, and
she also met with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister
Shaukat Aziz; she returned to Pakistan with Brad Pitt during the
Thanksgiving weekend in November to see the impact of the 2005 Kashmir
earthquake. In 2006, Jolie and Pitt flew to Haiti and visited a school
supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop
musician Wyclef Jean. While filming A Mighty Heart in India, Jolie met
with Afghan and Burmese refugees in New Delhi. She spent Christmas Day
2006 with Colombian refugees in San José, Costa Rica where she handed out
presents. 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 twice went to
Iraq, where she met with Iraqi refugees as well as multi-national forces
and U.S. troops.
Over time, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on
a political level. She has regularly attended World Refugee Day in
Washington, D.C., and she was an invited speaker at the World Economic
Forum in Davos in 2005 and 2006. Jolie also began lobbying humanitarian
interests in the U.S. capital, where she met with members of Congress at
least 20 times from 2003. She explained in Forbes: "As much as I would
love to never have to visit Washington, that's the way to move the ball."
In 2005, Jolie 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 pushed 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
an 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. 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 has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2003,
she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World
Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she
was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA. Cambodia's King
Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation
work in the country on August 12, 2005; she has pledged $5 million to set
up a wildlife sanctuary in the north-western province of Battambang and
owns property there. In 2007, Jolie became a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations, and she received the Freedom Award by the International
Rescue Committee.
After she and Pitt donated $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti following
a devastating 2010 earthquake, Jolie visited Haiti and the Dominican
Republic to discuss the future of relief efforts.
On March 28, 1996, Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her
co-star in the film Hackers (1995). She attended her wedding in black
rubber pants and a white shirt, upon which she had written the groom's
name in her blood. Jolie and Miller separated the following year and
subsequently divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms and
Jolie later explained, "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."
While shooting Pushing Tin (1999) she met American actor Billy Bob
Thornton, and subsequently married him on on May 5, 2000. As a result of
their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love—most
famously wearing one another's blood in vials around their necks—their
relationship became a favorite topic of the entertainment media. Jolie and
Thornton divorced on May 27, 2003. Asked about the sudden dissolution of
their marriage, Jolie stated, "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 has said in interviews that she is bisexual and has long
acknowledged that she had a sexual relationship with her Foxfire (1996)
co-star Jenny Shimizu, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't
married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her."
In 2003, asked if she was bisexual, Jolie responded, "Of course. If I fell
in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss
and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!"
In early 2005, Jolie was involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal
when she was accused of being the reason for the divorce of actors Brad
Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The allegation was that she and Pitt had
started an affair during filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). She denied
this on several occasions, but admitted that they "fell in love" on the
set. In an interview in 2005, she explained, "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."
While Jolie and Pitt never publicly commented on the nature of their
relationship, speculations continued throughout 2005. The first intimate
paparazzi photos emerged in April, one month after Aniston had filed for
divorce; they showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya.
During the summer Jolie and Pitt were seen together with increasing
frequency and most of the entertainment media considered them a couple,
dubbing them "Brangelina". On January 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed to People
that she was pregnant with Pitt's child and thereby confirmed their
relationship for the first time in public.
In February 2010, Jolie and Pitt sued UK tabloid News of the World for
reporting they were splitting up.
On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox
Chivan. He was born on August 5, 2001 as Rath Vibol in Cambodia, and he
initially lived in a local orphanage in Battambang. Jolie decided to apply
for adoption after she had visited Cambodia twice, while filming Tomb
Raider and on a UNHCR field trip in 2001. After her divorce from her
second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie received sole custody of Maddox.
Like Jolie's other children, Maddox has gained considerable celebrity and
appears regularly in the tabloid media.
Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl from Ethiopia, Zahara Marley, on July
6, 2005. Zahara was born on January 8, 2005. She was originally named
Yemsrach by her mother, and was later given the legal name Tena Adam at an
orphanage. Jolie adopted her from Wide Horizons For Children orphanage in
Addis Ababa. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara was
hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition. In 2007, media outlets
reported Zahara's biological mother, Mentewabe Dawit, was still alive and
wanted her daughter back, but she later denied these reports, saying she
thought Zahara was "very fortunate" to be adopted by Jolie.
Brad Pitt was reportedly present when Jolie signed the adoption papers and
collected her daughter; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the
decision to adopt Zahara together. On January 19, 2006, a judge in
California approved Pitt's request to legally adopt Jolie's two children.
Their surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt".
Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund, Namibia, by
a scheduled caesarean section, on May 27, 2006. Pitt confirmed that their
newly-born daughter would have a Namibian passport, and Jolie decided to
sell the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images
herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these valuable
photographs. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American
rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights
for roughly $3.5 million. All profits were donated to an undisclosed
charity by Jolie and Pitt. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax
figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it was the first infant re-created in wax
by Madame Tussauds.
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a three-year-old boy from Vietnam, Pax
Thien, who was born on November 29, 2003 and abandoned at birth at a local
hospital, where he was initially named Pham Quang Sang. Jolie adopted the
boy from the Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City. She revealed that his
first name, Pax, was suggested by her mother before her death.
Following months of tabloid speculation, Jolie confirmed she was expecting
twins at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. She gave birth to a boy, Knox
Léon, and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline, by caesarean section at the Lenval
hospital in Nice, France, on July 12, 2008. The rights for the first
images of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for $14
million—the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The money went
to the Jolie/Pitt Foundation.
Jolie appeared in the media from an early age due to her famous father Jon
Voight. At seven she had a small part in Lookin' to Get Out, a movie
co-written by and starring her father, and in 1986 and 1988 she attended
the Academy Awards as a teenager with him. However, when she started her
acting career, Jolie decided not to use "Voight" as a stage name, because
she wished to establish her own identity as an actress. Jolie was never
shy about controversy and integrated her teenage "wild girl" image into
her public persona in the first years of her career. During her acceptance
speech at the 2000 Academy Awards, Jolie declared, "I'm so in love with my
brother right now", which, combined with her affectionate behavior towards
him that night, sparked speculation in the tabloid media of an incestuous
relationship with her brother James Haven. She has denied those rumors
vehemently, and Jolie and Haven later explained in interviews that after
their parents' divorce they relied on one another and because of that they
hold on to each other as a means of emotional support.
Jolie does not employ a publicist or an agent. She quickly became a
tabloid's favorite, since she presented herself as very outspoken in
interviews, discussing her love life and her interest in BDSM openly, and
once claiming to be "most likely to sleep with a female fan". As one of
her most distinctive physical features, Jolie's lips have attracted
notable media attention and she has been described as "the current gold
standard of beauty in the West" among women seeking cosmetic surgery. She
also created headlines with her much publicized marriage to Billy Bob
Thornton and her subsequent change into an advocate for global
humanitarian problems. As she took on the role of UNHCR Goodwill
Ambassador she started to use her celebrity to highlight humanitarian
causes worldwide. Jolie has been taking flying lessons since 2004 and she
has a private pilot license (with an instrument rating) and owns a Cirrus
SR22 airplane. The media speculated that Jolie is a Buddhist, but she said
that she teaches Buddhism to her son Maddox because she considers it part
of his culture. Jolie has not stated definitively whether or not she
believes in God. When asked in 2000 if there was a God, she said, "For the
people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn't need to be a God for
me."
Starting in 2005, her relationship with Brad Pitt became one of the most
reported celebrity stories worldwide. After Jolie confirmed her pregnancy
in early 2006, the unprecedented media hype surrounding them "reached the
point of insanity" as Reuters described it in their story "The Brangelina
fever". Trying to avoid the media attention, the couple went to Namibia
for the birth of Shiloh, "the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ",
as it had been described. Two years later, Jolie's second pregnancy again
fueled a media frenzy. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital
in Nice, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade to
report on the birth.
Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world.
According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31% of
respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them, by 2006
she was familiar to 81% of Americans. In a 2006 global industry survey by
ACNielsen in 42 international markets Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was
found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products
worldwide. Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most
influential people in the world, in 2006 and 2008. She was described as
the world's most beautiful woman in the 2006 "100 Most Beautiful" issue of
People, and she was voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the
British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols in 2007.
The Hollywood Reporter named Jolie the highest-paid actress of 2008,
earning $15 million per film. She also topped Forbes' annual Celebrity 100
list in 2009; she had previously been ranked No. 14 in 2007, and No. 3 in
2008
Jolie's numerous tattoos have been the subject of much media attention and
have often been addressed by interviewers. Jolie stated that, while she is
not opposed to film nudity, the large number of tattoos on her body has
forced filmmakers to become more creative when planning nude or love
scenes. Make-up has been used to cover up the tattoos in many of her
productions. Jolie has thirteen known tattoos, among them the Tennessee
Williams quote "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", which she
got together with her mother, the Arabic language phrase "العزيمة"
(strength of will), the Latin proverb "quod me nutrit me destruit" (what
nourishes me destroys me), and a Yantra prayer written in the ancient
Khmer script for her son Maddox. She also has six sets of geographical
coordinates on her upper left arm indicating the birthplaces of her
children. Over time she covered or lasered several of her tattoos,
including "Billy Bob", the name of her former husband Billy Bob Thornton,
a Chinese character for death (死), and a window on her lower back; she
explained that she removed the window, because, while she used to spend
all of her time looking out through windows wishing to be outside, she now
lives there all of the time. |
