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| Angelina
Jolie
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Angelina
Jolie Voight known as Angelina Jolie
was born on June 4, 1975, in Los
Angeles, California, USA. She is
an American film actress, a former
fashion model, and a Goodwill Ambassador
for the UN Refugee Agency.Jolie
is often cited by popular media
as one of the world's most beautiful
women and her off-screen life is
widely reported. She has received
three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen
Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy
Award. |
Angelina Jolie is the daughter of actors
Jon Voight and the late Marcheline Bertrand.
Jolie 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
was French, because of her name, but Jolie's
grandparents were French-Canadian.On her
father's side, she is of Czech descent,
and on her mother's side she is French-Canadian
and "Iroquois".
After
her parents' separation in 1976, Angelina
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 collected snakes
and lizards and had a crush on Mr. Spock.
She 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
11, the family moved back to Los Angeles
and Angelina 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. 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. Jolie 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.
As her despondency grew, she started to
cut herself; later commenting during an
appearance on CNN, "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."At
14, she dropped out of her acting classes
and dreamed of becoming a funeral director.Her
self-loathing led her to embark on a rebellious
period in her life; she wore black, dyed
her hair purple and went out moshing with
her live-in boyfriend.Two years later,
after the relationship had ended, Jolie
rented an apartment above a garage a few
blocks from her mother's home. Angelina
Jolie returned to theatre studies and
graduated from high school, though in
recent time 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 has been long estranged from her
father, blaming his infidelity for the
break-up of the family, though a reconciliation
was attempted, and he appeared with her
in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. In July 2002,
she 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
emotional problems" on Access Hollywood.
In the October 2004 issue of Premiere
Magazine, Jolie 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. Voight
has not met his grandchildren.
After
appearing 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) and she played
her first leading role in a major film
in Hackers (1995). She appeared 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). She achieved
international fame as a result of her
portrayal of videogame 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 had her biggest
commercial success with the action-comedy
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005).
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 two adopted children, Maddox
and Zahara, and a biological child, Shiloh.
Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes
throughout the world, and is noted for
her work with refugees through UNHCR.
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