Angelina Jolie ( born Angelina
Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress and director. She has
received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three
Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by
Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie promotes humanitarian causes, and is
noted for her work with refugees as a Special Envoy and former Goodwill
Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). She has been cited as the world's "most beautiful" woman, a
title for which she has received substantial media attention.
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| Angelina Jolie |
Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), but her film 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 the cyber-thriller Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical television 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 wide fame after
her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb
Raider (2001), and established herself among the highest-paid actresses
in Hollywood with the sequel The Cradle of Life (2003). She reinforced
her reputation as a leading action star with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
and Wanted (2008)—her biggest non-animated commercial successes to
date[8]—and received further critical acclaim for her performances in
the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), which earned her
a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Jolie made her
directorial debut with the wartime drama In the Land of Blood and Honey
(2011).
Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie now lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship notable for fervent media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, and three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.
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| Angelina Jolie |
Early life and family
Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of actor James Haven, niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor, and goddaughter of actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent, and on her mother's side, she is of primarily French Canadian, Dutch, and German ancestry. Like her mother, Jolie has stated that she is part Iroquois; her only known Native ancestor was a Huron woman born in 1649.
After her parents' separation in
1976, Jolie and her brother lived with their mother, who abandoned her
acting ambitions to focus on raising her children. 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 six years old, her mother and stepfather, filmmaker
Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los
Angeles five years later. She then 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, Jolie dropped
out of her acting classes and aspired to become a funeral director. She
began working as a fashion model, modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New
York, and London. During this period, she wore black clothing,
experimented with knife play, 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
graduated from high school and returned to theater studies, 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."
Jolie suffered episodes of suicidal
depression throughout her teens and early twenties. She felt isolated at
Beverly Hills High School among the children of some of the area's
affluent families, as her mother survived on a more modest income, and
she was teased by other students, who targeted her for being extremely
thin and for wearing glasses and braces. She found it difficult to
emotionally connect with other people, and as a result she started to
self-harm; 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." She also began experimenting with drugs;
by the age of 20, she had tried "just about every drug possible,"
including heroin.
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Jolie has had a difficult relationship
with her father. Due to Voight's marital infidelity and the resulting
breakup of her parents' marriage, she was estranged from her father for
many years. They reconciled and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb
Raider (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated. In July 2002,
Jolie—who had long used her middle name as a stage name to establish
her own identity as an actress—filed a request to legally drop Voight as
her surname, which was granted on September 12, 2002. In August of that
year, Voight claimed his daughter had "serious mental problems" on
Access Hollywood. In response, Jolie released a statement in which she
indicated that she no longer wished to pursue a relationship with her
father. She explained that because she had adopted her son Maddox, she
did not think it was healthy for her to associate with Voight. In the
wake of her beloved mother's death from ovarian cancer on January 27,
2007, Jolie again reconciled with her father after a six-year
estrangement.
Career
Early work: 1982; 1991–1997
When she was seven years old, Jolie
had a small part in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), a movie co-written by and
starring her father, Jon Voight. She committed to acting at the age of
16, but initially found it difficult to pass auditions, often being told
that she was "too dark." She appeared in five of her brother's student
films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinema-Television, as
well as in several music videos, namely Lenny Kravitz's "Stand by My
Woman" (1991), Antonello Venditti's "Alta Marea" (1991), The
Lemonheads's "It's About Time" (1993), and Meat Loaf's "Rock and Roll
Dreams Come Through" (1993). 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."
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Jolie began her professional
film career in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the
low-budget, straight-to-video science-fiction sequel 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. Jolie
was so disappointed with the film that she did not audition again for a
year. Following a supporting role in the independent film Without
Evidence (1995), Jolie starred as Kate "Acid Burn" Libby in her first
Hollywood picture, Hackers (1995). 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 next appeared 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 played a young
woman who falls for Danny Aiello's middle-aged character, while he
develops feelings for her mother, played by Anne Archer. That same year,
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 well-received by critics; 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 film
True Women (1997), a historical romantic drama set in the American West
and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle. That year, she also
appeared as a stripper in the music video for "Anybody Seen My Baby?" by
the Rolling Stones.
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Breakthrough: 1998–2000
Jolie's career prospects began to
improve after she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in TNT's
George Wallace (1997). She portrayed Cornelia Wallace, the second wife
of Alabama Governor George Wallace, played by Gary Sinise. The film was
very well received by critics and won, among other awards, the Golden
Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film. Jolie also received
an Emmy Award nomination for her performance.
In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO's
Gia, portraying supermodel Gia Carangi. The film chronicled the
destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her addiction to
heroin, and her decline and death from AIDS in the mid-1980s. 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 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.'" After Gia wrapped in 1997, Jolie
announced that she had given up acting for good, because she felt that
she had "nothing else to give." She separated from Miller and moved to
New York, where she enrolled at New York University to study filmmaking
and attend writing classes; she later described it as "just good for me
to collect myself." Encouraged by her Golden Globe Award win for George
Wallace and the positive critical reception of Gia, she resumed her
career.
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Jolie returned to film in the
1998 gangster movie Hell's Kitchen. Later that year, she 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 from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
In 1999, she starred in the
comedy-drama Pushing Tin, alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and
Cate Blanchett. The film received a mixed reception from critics, and
Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized.
The Washington Post wrote, "Mary (Angelina Jolie) [is] 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
co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector (1999), an
adaptation of a crime novel by Jeffery Deaver. Jolie played 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 mental patient Lisa Rowe in Girl, Interrupted
(1999), an adaptation of author Susanna Kaysen's 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, the 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 had been a welcome relief after the emotionally
heavy role of Lisa Rowe. It became her highest grossing movie up until
then, earning $237 million internationally.
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International success: 2001–present
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 an English 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 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 his mail-order bride 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
starred in Life or Something Like It as an ambitious television 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 (2003), which established
her among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. The sequel was not as
lucrative as the original, earning $156 million at the international box
office. She appeared in the music video for Korn's "Did My Time", which
was used to promote the film. She next starred in Beyond Borders
(2003), as a socialite who joins aid workers in Africa and Asia. The
film reflected Jolie's real-life interest in promoting humanitarian
relief, but it 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."
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In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan
Hawke in the thriller Taking Lives. She portrayed 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 the angelfish Lola in the
DreamWorks animated movie Shark Tale (2004), and had a brief appearance
in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), a science fiction
adventure film shot entirely with actors in front of a bluescreen. That
same year, Jolie played Olympias in Alexander, about the life of
Alexander the Great. The film failed domestically, which director Oliver
Stone attributed to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's
bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139
million outside the United States.
Jolie then starred opposite Brad Pitt
in the 2005 action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which tells the story of
a bored married couple, John and Jane Smith, who find out that they are
both secret assassins. 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, making it the
seventh-highest grossing film of 2005
Jolie 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, an officer based on
James Jesus Angleton and played by Matt Damon. Jolie played the
supporting role of Margaret "Clover" 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 daily life in
27 locations around the world during a single week. The film was
screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and was intended for distribution
to high schools through the National Education Association. Jolie then
starred as Mariane Pearl in the documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart
(2007). Based on Pearl's memoir of the same name, the film chronicles
the kidnapping and murder of her husband, The Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. The Hollywood Reporter described
Jolie's performance as "well-measured and moving," played "with respect
and a firm grasp on a difficult accent." Jolie was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.
She also played Grendel's mother in the animated epic Beowulf (2007),
which was created through the motion capture technique.
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Jolie co-starred alongside James
McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the 2008 action movie Wanted, an adaptation
of Mark Millar's graphic novel of the same name. The film received
predominately favorable reviews and proved 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 the third-highest
grossing film of 2008. That same year, Jolie took on the lead role in
Clint Eastwood's drama Changeling. Based in part on the Wineville
Chicken Coop Murders, the film stars Jolie as Christine Collins, who is
reunited with her kidnapped son in 1928 Los Angeles—only to realize the
boy is an impostor. 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
received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a
Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award.
Jolie next starred in the 2010
thriller Salt, her first film in two years. She starred alongside Liev
Schreiber as CIA agent Evelyn Salt, who goes on the run after she is
accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. Originally written as male, the
character Salt underwent a gender change after a Colombia Pictures
executive suggested Jolie for the role to director Phillip Noyce. The
film was an international success with revenue of $294 million.[8] It
received mixed to positive reviews, with Jolie's performance earning
praise; Empire remarked, "When it comes to selling incredible, crazy,
death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business." She
also starred opposite Johnny Depp in The Tourist (2010), which was a
major critical failure. Peter Travers wrote, "Depp and Jolie hit career
lows, producing the chemistry of high-fashion zombies." After a slow
start at the domestic box office, the film went on to gross $278 million
worldwide. Jolie received a controversial Golden Globe Award
nomination, which was speculated to have been given merely to ensure her
high-profile presence at the awards ceremony.
In 2011, Jolie reprised her voice role
as Master Tigress in the animated DreamWorks sequel Kung Fu Panda 2. It
became the fourth-highest grossing film of 2011 and Jolie's highest
grossing film to date, earning $666 million at the international box
office. She also made her directorial feature debut with In the Land of
Blood and Honey (2011), a love story between a Serb soldier and a
Bosniak prisoner of war, set during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. Jolie, who
had twice visited Bosnia-Herzegovina in her capacity as a UNHCR Goodwill
Ambassador, explained that she made the film to rekindle attention for
the survivors of a war that took place in recent history. The film,
which Jolie also scripted and co-produced, aroused both praise and
criticism in the Balkans; the response from Bosniak war-victims advocacy
organizations was "overwhelmingly positive," while a Serb war prisoners
group decried the film for its alleged anti-Serb bias. Sarajevo's
regional government named Jolie an honorary citizen of the capital for
raising awareness of the war. In the Land of Blood and Honey won the
Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America, which honors
films that highlight provocative social issues. It also received a
nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Jolie will play the Disney villain
Maleficent in the upcoming film of the same name, where the character's
background story will be revealed.
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Personal life
Relationships
Jolie had a serious boyfriend for two
years from the age of 14. Her mother allowed them to live together in
her home, of which Jolie later said, "I was either going to be reckless
on the streets with my boyfriend or he was going to be with me in my
bedroom with my mom in the next room. She made the choice, and because
of it, I continued to go to school every morning and explored my first
relationship in a safe way." She has compared the relationship to a
marriage in its emotional intensity, and said that the breakup compelled
her to dedicate herself to her acting career at the age of 16.
During filming of Hackers (1995), Jolie had a romance with British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her first lover since the relationship in her early teens. They were not in touch for many months after production ended, but eventually reconnected and married soon after on March 28, 1996. She attended her wedding in black rubber pants and a white T-shirt, upon which she had written the groom's name in her blood.[93] Jolie and Miller separated in September 1997 and 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."
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| Angelina Jolie |
Jolie had a brief relationship with
model-actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of Foxfire (1996). She later
said, "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." Shimizu
claimed in 2005 that her relationship with Jolie had lasted many years
and continued even while Jolie was romantically involved with other
people.[96] 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!"
After a two-month courtship, Jolie
married actor Billy Bob Thornton on May 5, 2000, in Las Vegas. They met
on the set of Pushing Tin (1999), but did not pursue a relationship at
that time as Thornton was engaged to actress Laura Dern.[98] 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 marriage became a favorite topic of the entertainment media.
Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption of a son from Cambodia in
March 2002, but abruptly separated three months later. Their divorce was
finalized 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."
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| Angelina Jolie |
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. She and
Pitt were alleged to have started an affair during filming of Mr. &
Mrs. Smith (2005). She denied this on several occasions, but later
admitted that they "fell in love" on the set. She explained in 2005, "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." Jolie and Pitt did not publicly comment on the
nature of their relationship until January 2006, when Jolie confirmed to
People that she was pregnant with Pitt's child. Pitt and Jolie
announced their engagement in April 2012, after seven years together.
The couple—dubbed "Brangelina" by the entertainment media—are the
subject of worldwide media coverage.
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelina_jolie
