Born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California, Angelina Jolie is an actress, often referred to as one of the most beautiful women in the world, and a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. The daughter to actor-parents, Jolie is of primarily Slovak and German descent. As a child, she said that watching movies at a young age inspired her interest in acting.
After settling in New York following her parents’ divorce, Angelina Jolie studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute for two years. She attended Beverly Hills High School where she often felt inadequate among the children of some of the area’s most affluent families. Being extremely thin, she tried modeling but was unsuccessful. She started to cut herself. “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 confessed being perpetually in black and dreaming of being a funeral director. She eventually returned to theater studies and graduated from high school.
At 14, Angelina Jolie started working as a model, appearing in music videos and modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New York, and London. At the age of 16, she went back to her original love, theater. After appearing on her brother’s student films, Jolie’s professional career began with her bagging the lead in a low-budget film called Cyborg 2. She then starred in her first Hollywood picture in Hackers in 1995, where she got favorable reviews. She went on to star in a string of movies, namely Love Is All There Is, Mojave Moon, Foxfire, Playing God, and eventually hit it big with hits such as The Bone Collector, Girl, Interrupted, Gone in 60 Seconds, and the Lara Croft movies, which made her an international name. She always got rave reviews for her acting.
In 2005, Angelina Jolie starred opposite Brad Pitt on her biggest commercial success to date Mr. & Mrs. Smith. She denied rumors that she and Pitt started an affair during the filming of this movie, which lead to Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s breakup. Other than acting, Jolie is also well-known for her humanitarian work, mostly influenced by sights of poverty-stricken Cambodia while filming Tomb Raider. “We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering.” In 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, Cambodian-born Maddox.
Jolie currently has thirteen known tattoos, among them the Tennessee Williams quote "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", which she got together with her mother, the Arabic language phrase (strength of will), the Latin proverb "quod me nutrit me destruit" (what nourishes me destroys me), and a Yantra prayer written in the ancient Khmer script for her son Maddox.
She also has six sets of geographical coordinates on her upper left arm indicating the birthplaces of her children.
Over time she covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including "Billy Bob", the name of her former husband Billy Bob Thornton, a Chinese character for death, and a window on her lower back; she explained that she removed the window, because, while she used to spend all of her time looking out through windows wishing to be outside, she now lives there all of the time.
Golden Globe Award
1998 Best Supporting Actress – Series/Miniseries/TV Movie, George Wallace
1999 Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, Gia
2000 Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture, Girl, Interrupted
National Board of Review Award
1998 Breakthrough Performance – Female, Playing by Heart
Screen Actors Guild Award
1999 Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries, Gia
2000 Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, Girl, Interrupted
Academy Award
2000 Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Girl, Interrupted
People's Choice Award
2004 Favourite Female Action Star, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
2010: Salt - Evelyn Salt
2008: Wanted - Fox
2008: Kung Fu Panda - Tigress (voice)
2008: Changeling - Christine Collins
2007: Beowulf - Grendel's mother
2007: A Mighty Heart - Mariane Pearl
2006: The Good Shepherd - Margaret Russell
2005: Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Jane Smith
2004: Alexander - Olympias
2004: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - Francesca "Franky" Cook
2004: Shark Tale - Lola (voice)
2004: Taking Lives - Illeana Scott
2003: Beyond Borders - Sarah Jordan
2003: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - Lara Croft
2002: Life or Something Like It - Lanie Kerrigan
2001: Original Sin - Julia Russell
2001: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - Lara Croft
2000: Gone in Sixty Seconds - Sara "Sway" Wayland
1999: Girl, Interrupted - Lisa Rowe
1999: The Bone Collector - Amelia Donaghy
1998: Pushing Tin - Mary Bell
1998: Playing by Heart - Joan
1998: Hell's Kitchen - Gloria McNeary
1998: Gia - Gia Marie Carangi
1997: Playing God - Claire
1997: George Wallace - Cornelia Wallace
1997: True Women - Georgia Virginia Lawshe Woods
1996: Foxfire - Margret "Legs" Sadovsky
1996: Love Is All There Is - Gina Malacici
1996: Mojave Moon - Eleanor "Elie" Rigby
1995: Hackers - Kate "Acid Burn" Libby
1995: Without Evidence - Jodie Swearingen
"I am still at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos"
"I always play women I would date."
"I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet."
"I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I'm walking down the street."
"I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I'll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don't taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me."
"I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world."
"I never like being touched, ever. People used to say I held my breath when they were hugging me. I still do."
"I need someone physically stronger than me... I am always on top. It's really unfortunate. I am begging for the man that can put me on the bottom. Or the woman. Anybody that can take me down."
"I'm getting a wrinkle above my eyebrow because I just can't stop lifting it, and I love that you know."
"Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable!"
"When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire."