Angelina Jolie Biography
Angelina Jolie has gone from modeling, starring in music videos, and acting in student films directed by her brother, to becoming one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood today. A controversial figure, she is known as much for her acting as she is for her humanitarian efforts, eccentricities, and tumultuous relationships. She is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. People often assume that Jolie's mother is French, because of her name, but Jolie's grandparents were French-Canadian.
Angelina Jolie
was born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California. As the daughter of Academy Award winning actor
Jon Voight, it was fitting that she chose to study theater at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Before starring in box office hits, Jolie worked as a model in London, New York, and Los Angeles. She also appeared in music videos for big-name artists like
Meat Loaf and
Lenny Kravitz. Her first appearance on the big screen was in 1982 when she acted alongside her father in the comedy
Lookin’ to Get Out.
Although she appeared in several films in the early 1990s, her first starring role was in the 1995 film
Hackers. She earned critical acclaim for her 1998 television film Gia, a role that earned her a Golden Globe award as well as an Emmy nomination. Since this time she has acted in well-known and highly acclaimed films such as The Bone Collector and Girl, Interrupted, as well as several box office flops. Even though some of Jolie’s movies have been unsuccessful, she is one of the most sought after actresses in Hollywood today.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith earned her ten million dollars while the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movies have brought her seven and twelve million dollars respectively. She also appears in the film The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro.
Angelina Jolly For Focus Magazine (March 2010)
Angelina’s relationships are as fascinating as the woman herself. Her first marriage was in 1996, to Hacker’s co-star Johnny Lee Miller, who also acted in the controversial film Trainspotting. At her wedding, Jolie sported a white shirt with Miller’s name painted in blood as she walked down the aisle.
After their divorce in 1999, Jolie married Academy Award winning actor Billy Bob Thornton, who had been previously married four times. This relationship was highly covered by the media for the couple’s odd testaments of love, including their practice of wearing vials of each other’s blood around their necks. The odd
testaments of love ended along with the marriage in 2003.
Angelina’s current and most widely publicized relationship is with actor Brad Pitt who was once engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow. Pitt and Jolie met on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith where it is rumored that the relationship began. Pitt is widely known in Hollywood, not only as a movie star, but also as the former husband of Jennifer Aniston. The Aniston-Pitt marriage took place in 2000, and lasted only four short years. Because of the timing of their divorce, rumors abound that Jolie was the cause of this power-couple’s separation and ultimate divorce.
Although Jolie has denied that she began an affair with Pitt while he was still married, the current nature of their relationship is no secret. He has adopted Angelina’s two adopted children: Cambodian-born Maddox and Ethiopian-born Zahara, whose last names were legally changed to Jolie-Pitt. Jolie also gave birth to their biological daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, on May 27, 2006. As of yet, there has been no mention of a wedding date.
Prior to the birth of their biological child, Jolie and Pitt travelled to Vietnam and adopted a little three year old boy in March 2007. Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, had been abandoned at birth at a local hospital, where he was initially named Pham Quang Sang. Jolie told the press that the child's name, Pax, was chosen by her mother just before her death in 2007.
