Jolie, Angelina

▪ 2008

Angelina Voight 

born June 4, 1975, Los Angeles, Calif.

 In 2007 American actress Angelina Jolie, one of Hollywood's brightest stars, continued to light up the screen and to use her celebrity to draw attention to the social issues she championed. Her highly publicized film A Mighty Heart (2007), in which she portrayed the widow of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, not only gave the small-budget movie a greater media presence but also provided the actress with a forum for speaking out about the plight of journalists reporting from war zones. She also continued in her role, begun in 2001, as a hands-on UN goodwill ambassador, work that had already taken her on awareness-raising campaigns to such countries as Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Pakistan (the site of Pearl's abduction and murder).

      Jolie was the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. It did not take long for Jolie to follow in her parents' footsteps—she filmed a bit part in the comedy Lookin' to Get Out at the age of 5 and enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute at 11. She became a professional model as a teenager and appeared in several music videos before transitioning into acting full-time. Jolie had prominent roles in the films Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996) and quickly became a popular sex symbol, but she was better known for her full lips and her numerous magazine covers than for her acting ability. Her career took off after appearances in two made-for-television productions; she played an embattled politician's wife in George Wallace (1997) and an AIDS-stricken supermodel in Gia (1998), roles that earned her back-to-back Golden Globe Awards. Her critically acclaimed performances continued in 1999 when she portrayed a psychiatric patient in Girl, Interrupted and earned the Academy Award for best supporting actress.

      Following her Oscar win, Jolie starred in a string of big-budget films, including the video-game adaptation Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), the thriller Taking Lives (2004), and the tongue-in-cheek spy adventure Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). The latter film paired her with Brad Pitt, and the two superstars began a relationship soon thereafter (Pitt was married at the time) that quickly became a media sensation, earning the pair the ubiquitous tabloid moniker “Brangelina.” Pitt in 2006 adopted Jolie's two children (whom she had previously adopted on her own in 2002 and 2005 from orphanages in Cambodia and Ethiopia, respectively), and the couple had their first biological child on May 27, 2006. They added a fourth child to their family in March 2007 when they adopted a boy from a Vietnamese orphanage. Pitt and Jolie characteristically used the public's interest in their relationship as a platform for speaking out for a cause; the pair vowed to never marry until couples of all sexual orientations were able to do so legally.

Adam Augustyn

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▪ American actress

original name  Angelina Jolie Voight 

born June 4, 1975, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.

 

 American actress known for her sex appeal and edginess as well as for her humanitarian work. She won an Academy Award for her supporting role as a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

      Jolie, who was the daughter of actor Jon Voight, spent much of her childhood in New York before relocating to Los Angeles at age 11. She attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for two years and then enrolled at Beverly Hills High School. She later studied drama at New York University. In addition to acting in theatre productions, she modeled and appeared in music videos.

      Jolie's first major movie role was in Hackers (1995), during the filming of which she met her first husband, British actor Johnny Lee Miller (married 1996; divorced 1999). The film failed to find an audience, as did a series of subsequent movies. In 1997, however, Jolie garnered much attention as the wife of Alabama's segregationist governor in the television movie George Wallace, and she later won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal. The following year she played a supermodel struggling with drug addiction in the HBO movie Gia, a performance that earned her multiple honours, including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 1999 she appeared in the comedy Pushing Tin with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, and the following year she married Thornton (divorced 2003).

      After her Oscar-winning turn in Girl Interrupted, Jolie starred in a series of action movies. She played the girlfriend of a carjacker (Nicholas Cage (Cage, Nicolas)) in Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) and later adopted a British accent as well as mastering street fighting and kickboxing for the title roles in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). In 2004 she portrayed the mother of Alexander the Great in Oliver Stone's Alexander and also starred opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a sci-fi thriller set in 1930s New York City. Both films were box-office disappointments, but Jolie scored a hit with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), in which she played an assassin pretending to be a normal housewife; while working on the film, she met Brad Pitt, who became her partner. In Robert De Niro (De Niro, Robert)'s The Good Shepherd (2006), she was the aggrieved wife of an early CIA agent (Matt Damon (Damon, Matt)). Jolie earned critical acclaim for her performance as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart (2007). Based on a true story, the film followed efforts to rescue Pearl's husband, Daniel, who was kidnapped and later murdered by Islamic extremists while reporting in Pakistan for The Wall Street Journal. Jolie's later films include Beowulf (2007) and Wanted (2008). Her immersion into the role of a mother whose son is kidnapped and later replaced by a different child in Clint Eastwood (Eastwood, Clint)'s Changeling (2008) resulted in another Oscar nomination.

 Jolie's personal life often attracted at least as much attention as her acting. Her relationship with Pitt became fodder for tabloids, and the birth of the couple's biological children, Shiloh (2006) and twins Knox and Vivienne (2008), caused a media frenzy. Her humanitarian work also drew interest. In 2001 she was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office of the) (UNHCR). After that appointment she traveled to numerous poverty-stricken countries and, with Pitt, adopted children from Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam—Maddox, Zahara, and Pax, respectively.

 

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