Angelina Jolie, who was born on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California, starred in the HBO miniseries Gia before winning an Oscar Award for best supporting actress for Girl, Interrupted. Jolie rose to prominence as a leading lady in films such as Wanted, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Salt, and Changeling. She went on to have a tremendous international hit with Disney’s Maleficent, which generated a sequel. In addition, Jolie directed the films In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, and By the Sea, in which she co-starred with her then-husband Brad Pitt.
Early Life and Acting Roots
Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 4, 1975, to actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand. She started acting at a young age, attending the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in her early teens. Jolie later enrolled at New York University.
Angelina Jolie’s Movies
‘Gia’ and Oscar Win for ‘Girl, Interrupted’
Angelina Jolie rose to fame as an actress in the 1990s. She made a name for herself in the 1998 television film Gia, based on the tragic life of model Gia Marie Carangi, for which she received a Golden Globe for best actress. Her meteoric rise continued in Girl, Interrupted (1999), in which she played a rebellious member of a group of institutionalized kids, earning her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.
‘Tomb Raider,’ ‘Taking Lives,’ ‘Sky Captain’
Jolie proceeded to play a range of interesting parts in the new millennium. In the Tomb Raider films (2001 and 2003), she played explorer Lara Croft, an FBI profiler in Taking Lives (2004), and a squadron commander in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).
‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ ‘The Good Shepherd,’ ‘A Mighty Heart’
After collaborating with Brad Pitt to play married assassins in the seductive action film Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), Jolie portrayed a neglected, tormented socialite wife in The Good Shepherd (2006) and then a spiteful, monster mother in a Beowulf adaption (2007). That same year, she starred in A Mighty Heart as Mariane Pearl, the pregnant widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl. Mariane’s narrative of her husband’s kidnapping and murder served as the basis for the film.
‘Kung Fu Panda,’ ‘Changeling,’ ‘Salt’
Jolie first appeared as Master Tigress in the animated comedy Kung Fu Panda in 2008, a role she eventually repeated for multiple sequels. That same year, she played an assassin in Wanted and played a mother who investigates her son’s strange abduction and return in Clint Eastwood’s thriller Changeling. Her first Oscar nomination for best actress came as a result of the role. Jolie went on to star as Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative on the run after being accused of being a Russian spy, in the action-packed Salt (2010). That same year, she co-starred with Johnny Depp in The Tourist as the intriguing Elise Clifton-Ward.
‘Maleficent’ and Sequel
In 2014, the actress reaped the benefits of helping to shape a massive blockbuster, starring in and executive producing Disney’s Maleficent. Jolie played the titular sorceress, with the film taking a feminist revisionist approach to the primary villain from the animated classic Sleeping Beauty (1959). Despite mixed reviews from reviewers in the United States, Maleficent performed well at the box office, grossing roughly $240 million domestically and an extra $517 million internationally. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, the sequel, will be released in theaters in October 2019.
Director: ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey,’ ‘Unbroken’
Jolie also began working as a director. With 2011’s In the Land of Blood and Honey, she made her feature-length directorial debut, exploring a romance devastated by the Bosnian War. Unbroken, a movie about Olympian Louis Zamperini’s survival in a Japanese POW camp, was released in 2014. The film grossed more than $163 million worldwide, based on the bestseller book of the same name by Laura Hillenbrand.
‘By the Sea,’ ‘First They Killed My Father’
In 2016, Jolie directed and co-starred in the art film By the Sea, a slow-paced Mediterranean narrative set in the 1970s about a married couple and their interpersonal issues. The following year, she concentrated solely on directing First They Killed My Father, a film based on the memoir of a Cambodian activist who was trained as a child soldier.
Marriages and Children
Jolie has three marriages and is well-known for her off-screen romances. In 1995, she married Hackers co-star Jonny Lee Miller. In 1999, the couple divorced. Jolie married Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton the next year. That marriage lasted till 2003.
Jolie met Pitt while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2004. Pitt was married to Friends actress Jenifer Aniston at the time, and his romance with Jolie caused their divorce, resulting in a Hollywood scandal that dominated tabloids for years. As “Brangelina,” Jolie and Pitt became one of Hollywood’s most desired couples.
Jolie adopted a kid from Cambodia in 2002 and called him Maddox. Zahara, her daughter, was adopted three years later. Pitt applied to adopt both of Jolie’s children in 2005. Shiloh, the couple’s first biological daughter, was born in Namibia in 2006. Jolie, Pitt, and their children had gone to escape the media maelstrom that seemed to follow them wherever they went.
Angelina Jolie welcomed a new member to her family in March 2007. She adopted Pax Thien, a 3-year-old child from a Vietnamese orphanage. On July 12, 2008, Jolie gave birth to twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, in a beach hospital in southern France. The rights to the twins’ initial shots were sold to People and Hello! magazines for $14 million, making them the most expensive celebrity photographs ever taken.
Pitt and Jolie married in 2012. On August 23, 2014, they quietly married in a private ceremony surrounded by their family and friends, slipping beneath the paparazzi radar.
Split from Brad Pitt
Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt in September 2016, requesting sole physical custody of their six children, triggering yet another tabloid frenzy. Their bitter custody fight was publicized, with reports that Pitt became “verbally violent” and “physical” with Maddox after drinking on their private plane. The FBI and the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services initiated an inquiry but found no evidence of abuse; the couple then issued a joint statement saying they were working together to resolve their divorce.
Jolie revealed their split on the cover of Vanity Fair in September 2017. In the interview, she stated that “things were difficult” in their marriage by the summer of 2016, but she defended their life together. “[Our lifestyle] was in no way a disadvantage,” she told the magazine. “That was not the issue. That is and will continue to be one of the wonderful chances we can provide for our children. These are six strong-willed, intellectual, and worldly individuals. I’m quite proud of them.”
According to Entertainment Tonight, the actress and humanitarian was covertly dating a “handsome, older-looking man who is a real estate agent” in March 2018, albeit the relationship was not thought to be serious at the time.
A few months later, it was discovered that Jolie was in danger of losing primary custody of her six children due to her refusal to allow them to see Pitt during their divorce proceedings. According to court filings, the judge in their case labeled the children’s lack of a healthy relationship with their father “harmful,” and threatened Pitt with primary custody if things didn’t change. The judge suggested that the estranged couple take some steps, such as providing Pitt with each child’s cell phone number, and created a summer visitation schedule to follow with Jolie in London to make Maleficent 2.
In August, Jolie’s legal team filed court filings alleging that her estranged spouse had “paid no meaningful child support since separation,” which Pitt’s team denied.
Humanitarian Efforts
Angelina Jolie, a dedicated humanitarian, was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Refugee Agency in 2001. She has made headlines for her efforts to secure relief for refugees in Cambodia, Sudan, and Jordan, to name a few countries.
Jolie won the Global Humanitarian Action Award from the United Nations Association of the United States in 2005 for her advocacy on behalf of refugee rights. She has maintained her focus on global issues.
Health Issues and Cancer Prevention
Jolie suffered a significant personal loss in early 2007, when her mother died of ovarian cancer at the age of 56 following a long battle with the disease. Her granny died of cancer as well.
In May 2013, Jolie, 37, stated in a New York Times op-ed piece titled “My Medical Decision” that she had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer in the future. The actress stated that she opted to get the surgery after discovering that she carries the BRCA1 gene, which raises the risk of both breast and ovarian cancer.
“My physicians determined that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, but each woman’s risk is different,” Jolie explained. “After I realized this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and reduce the danger as much as possible.” Jolie stated that she had completed several months of medical procedures, including a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery, by late April 2013.
On March 24, 2015, Jolie revealed in another New York Times piece that she had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed the previous week to lower her cancer risk. “I didn’t do it only because I have the BRCA1 gene mutation, and I want other women to know that,” Jolie wrote. “A positive BRCA test does not necessitate surgery. I have spoken to several doctors, surgeons and naturopaths. There are alternatives. Some women use birth control tablets or different drugs in conjunction with regular checks. There is more than one way to deal with each health issue. The most essential thing is to learn about your alternatives and then choose what is best for you.”
The actress stated that she made her decision public in order to inform “other women at danger” about their options. In a September 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, Jolie revealed that she suffered Bell’s palsy, a facial nerve injury that caused one side of her face to droop. She said that acupuncture assisted her in entirely recovering from facial paralysis.