Angelina Jolie

Born June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, Angelina Jolie Voight comes from a family rich with acting and fame. Jon Voight is her father and actress Marcheline Bertrand is her mother. Her parents divorced when she was just a baby and Angelina Jolie and her brother James Haven (Voight) were raised mostly by their mother.

Despite the acting blood that flowed through her, Angelina's lifelong goal was to be a funeral director. But, by the time Angelina was 11, she had realized that acting was right up her alley, too. She enrolled and began studying at the Lee Stratsberg Theater Institute.
By age 16, Angelina moved out on her own and began modeling. She grabbed a few spots, and also had parts in music videos, most notably the Rolling Stones. She began film studies at the New York University. She soon gave up on school and began working with the Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. Angelina was not yet certain that acting was what she wanted out of life, but she definitely thought it sparked an interest.

By 1993, Angelina had decided to pursue acting full time. A forgetable first role in Cyborg II: Glass Shadow followed, but soon thereafter Angelina nabbed a role in Hackers, alongside Matthew Lillard and Jonny Lee Miller. The film got good reviews for Angelina, but incredibly bad reviews for the film. Regardless, Angelina got her first husband. She and Jonny Lee hit it off, and they married soon after. The wedding had Angelina wearing leather pants and a white t-shirt with her husband's name written in blood on her back. But, blood apparently wasn't thicker than water. Within a year, the two were separated, but their divorce wasn't finalized until 2000.

After her role in Hackers, Angelina went on to star in the critically praised HBO movie GIA. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of the bisexual and heroin addict supermodel Gia Carangi who died of AIDS. At the time, it has been said that Jolie who tends to absorb herself in her roles, may have gotten too much into this one according to worried friends.

Pushing Tin, The Bone Collector, which also featured Denzel Washington, and Playing By Heart followed each receiving mixed reviews, but all coming back with one thing in common : Angelina was excellent. But, it was Girl, Interrupted, a film that was supposed to relaunch Winona Ryder, that in fact catapulted Angelina into superstardom. She won an Oscar, stole the film out from under Winona, and was quickly established as the actress in Hollywood.

Angelina's second marriage came when she met Billy Bob Thornton while filming Pushing Tin. The two married in a small Las Vegas wedding in 2000. It was reported that Angelina checked herself into UCLA for psychological examination only four days prior to the wedding. Shortly after adopting a baby boy from Cambodia they divorced in 2002.

On screen, Jolie was hard to miss in 2000. She starred in a number of films, including the crime thriller Gone in Sixty Seconds, in which she co-starred as a car thief alongside Nicolas Cage, and Original Sin, a thriller that featured her as the bad-seed bride of a Cuban tycoon (Antonio Banderas). If she was hard to miss in 2000, Jolie was impossible to escape in 2001 with her turn as shapely video-game adventuress Lara Croft in the long anticipated film adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider video-game franchise. 2003 saw Jolie star again as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider2.

For several years prior to mid 2005, Jolie did not have a hit movie. Several of her movies, such as Alexander, Sky Captain, and Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life were major box office disappointments although Jolie usually received good notices. She did provide the voice of Lola in the successful animated film, Shark Tale. Nonetheless she remains one of Hollywood's most "in-demand" actresses.

In early 2005, Jolie found herself at the center of a well-publicized Hollywood scandal when she was accused of being the "other woman" in the marital break-up of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The allegation was that she and Pitt had started an affair during filming of the spy comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, something she denies. In several interviews she has denied starting an affair with Pitt. In an interview with Marie Claire magazine recently she stated that she could never have a relationship with a married man because she has seen what relationships like that did to her mother. Her father has acknowledged that he cheated on Jolie's mom when they were married. Jolie stated she "could not, could not look herself in the mirror" if she had an affair with a married man.

Thanks to a mixture of generally good reviews and advance publicity due to all the rumors, Mr. & Mrs. Smith opened in the No. 1 position at the box office after it was released in early June 2005, providing Jolie with her first box-office success in several years.

In March 2005, Jolie was named the third sexiest woman in the world by FHM magazine, from fifteen million votes worldwide.

Since taking on her goodwill ambassador duties, Jolie has on numerous occasions made public statements that she wants to quit acting and concentrate on her UN work (for example, see Ireland On-Line in June 2005). However, she has also stated that her work provides the income necessary for her to continue travelling the world on behalf of the UN.

Jolie continues to balance the demands of being a movie star with that of being a humanitarian, despite an apparently grueling schedule. On June 7, 2005, the Associated Press wire service reported on Jolie giving a presentation in Islamabad, Pakistan. That very same day, she attended the premiere of Mr. & Mrs. Smith in Los Angeles.

She now lives full-time in Buckinghamshire, England, and reportedly plans to purchase property in Cambodia.

In late June 2005, the New York Post reported a claim that Jolie is pregnant, a report republished on June 30 by Britain's Sky TV, Sun Media Corporation in Canada, and the Asian Hindustan Times, among others. Her publicists presently deny this report. On July 5, 2005, People magazine reported that Jolie was in the final stages of adopting a baby girl, who was orphaned by AIDS, from Ethiopia, through the agency Wide Horizons for Children. Jolie has named her daughter Zahara Marley Jolie. A woman in London has been claiming she is Zahara's birth mother since August of 2005. There has been no legal development regarding this claim. Ms. Jolie has contacted a lawyer in London to look into the matter. Earlier in the summer another woman came foward claiming to be the grandmother of Zahara. That claim too proved to be false. On September 28th 2005 while making an appearance to discuse American's financial involvment with fighting AIDS globally on CNN's "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer Jolie stated that her daughter is a "AIDS orphan." By that she means her birth mother died from the disease but her daughter does not have the disease. The birth father of Zahara is not known. Her statement made it clear that the birth mother is indeed dead. In September of 2005 Angelina Jolie was named the new spokesperson for the clothing line St. John Knits starting in the Spring/Fall 0f 2006. The deal with the clothing company includes the startup of a charity headed by Ms. Jolie. The charity will focus on children's issues and causes. It has been reported but not comfired that Angelina Jolie will also sit on the board of directors and have stock in the company. The deal is also believed to be the biggest celebrity clothing indorsment with the actress recieving 10-15 million dollars. Other celebrities such as Gwenyth Paltrow recieve something in the neighborhood of 5 million dollars to promote luxury clothing and accessories.

The American magazine US Weekly, in reporting Jolie's second adoption, indicated erroneously that Jolie and Pitt had adopted the girl together. When the magazine realized its error, the presses were stopped and an apology issued to Jolie and Pitt; printing of the issue resumed with the correction made, though a number of copies with the error were still released to the public. Reportedly, however, Pitt was present when Jolie signed the adoption papers. The agency later said Brad Pitt was not present when Angelina Jolie picked up her daughter.

In August 2005, Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie a Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country.

Besides her admitted affection towards death and the macabre, Jolie sports several scars from playing with knives (including an X on her arm, a slice on her stomach and a nick on her neck), or as she puts it "You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens". She also has spoken of using knifes in sexual play. Jolie also has admitted several times to being bisexual.

In addition to the scars, Angelina Jolie sports numerous tattoos:

1. Five slash-like columns of Khmer Script writing on her left shoulderblade
2. A dragon on her left arm
3. Billy Bob, above dragon tattoo, on left shoulder…now removed
4. A special custom design made by Angelina and Billy Bob Thornton on her right forearm
5. Roman Numerals XIII on her left forearm
6. "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages" Tennessee Williams quote on left inside forearm
7. A rune shaped design resembling a small letter H on her inside left wrist
8. A black dragon with a blue tongue on her lower hip (covered by the large black cross below)
9. "Quod me nutrit me destruit" Latin for "What nourishes me also destroys me" Located on her lower stomach
10. A Large black crucifix on her lower hip which covers the blue-tongued black dragon.
11. Energy waves located a little below her belly button
12. Japanese Kanji for death on her left shoulder (her first tattoo)
13. A dragon with tribal design on her lower back
14. A blue box - signifying a window on her lower back
15. Two black American Indian symbols on her lower back
16. "Courage”, location unknown, now removed.
17. “Billy Bob” located in her pubic area.

Filmography:

Beowulf (2007) (voice)
The Good Shepherd (2006)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Shark Tale (2004) (voice)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
The Fever (2004)
Taking Lives (2004)
Alexander (2004)
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
Beyond Borders (2003)
Life or Something Like It (2002)
Original Sin (2001)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Bone Collector, The (1999)
Pushing Tin (1999)
Playing by Heart (1998)
Hell's Kitchen (1998)
Playing God (1997)
Mojave Moon (1996)
Foxfire (1996)
Love Is All There Is (1996)
Without Evidence (1995)
Hackers (1995)
Angela & Viril (1993)
Cyborg 2 (1993)
Lookin' to Get Out (1982)