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Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie DCMG is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. She has been crowned Hollywood’s highest-paid actress countless times.
Jolie’s cinematic career began with the low-budget Cyborg 2 (1993) and her first main part in a major picture, Hackers (1995). She received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999). Her 2001 portrayal as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her a Hollywood sensation. She continued her action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010), and The Tourist (2010), and received critical acclaim for her dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Maleficent (2014), its sequel (2019), and Eternals (2021) were her biggest hits. She has voiced Kung Fu Panda since 2008. Jolie directed and wrote war plays In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), and First They Killed My Father (2017).
Jolie is a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient and an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. She is most known for her work as a Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, where she advocated for refugees until 2022. Jolie has visited over a dozen refugee camps and conflict zones in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine.
Jolie is one of the most prominent and influential figures in American entertainment. Media publications call her the world’s most beautiful lady. Her romances, marriages, and health have been published. Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, and Brad Pitt divorced her. Three of Pitt’s six children were adopted abroad.
Childhood and education
Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California, to actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of actor James Haven and the niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor and geologist and volcanologist Barry Voight. Her godparents are actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. Jolie is of German and Slovak descent on her father’s side. She has claimed distant Indi Her father maintains Jolie is “not seriously Iroquois” and that he and Bertrand made it up to make Bertrand look “exotic”.
After her parents’ separation in 1976, she and her brother lived with their mother, who had given up her acting career to raise her children. Jolie’s mother raised her as a Catholic but did not require her to go to church. As a child, she often watched movies with her mother, which inspired her interest in acting.
Because her mother was poor, Jolie felt lonely at Beverly Hills High School. She was teased by other students for being extremely thin and wearing glasses and braces. [15] At her mother’s insistence, she tried modelling, but failed. [18][19] She transferred to Moreno High School, an alternative school, where she became a “punk outsider,” wearing all-black clothing, going out moshing, and playing knife games with her live-in boyfriend. [15] She dropped out of her acting classes and aspired to beco
As a teenager, Jolie struggled to emotionally connect with others and self-harmed, later saying, “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 also had insomnia, an eating disorder, and used “just about every drug possible,” particularly heroin.
Jolie has had a lifelong dysfunctional relationship with her father, which began when Voight left the family when his daughter was less than a year old.[26] She has said that from then on their time together was sporadic and usually carried out in front of the press.[27] They reconciled when they appeared together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated.[13] Jolie petitioned the court to legally remove her surname, Voight, in favour of her middle name, which she had long used as a stage name; the name change was granted on September 12, 2002.[28] Voight then went public with their estrangement during an appearance on Access Hollywood, in which he claimed Jolie had “serious mental problems.”[29] At that point, her mother and brother also broke off contact with him.[30] They did not speak for six and a half years[31] but began rebuilding their relationship in the wake of Bertrand’s death from ovarian cancer on January 27, 2007[30][32] before going public with their reconciliation three years later.[30]
Career
1991–97 Early work
Jolie began acting professionally at 16, but she was often told her demeanour was “too dark.” She appeared in five of her brother’s student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinema-Television, as well as several music videos, including Lenny Kravitz’s “Stand by My Woman” (1991), Antonello Venditti’s “Alta Marea” (1991), The Lemonheads’ “It’s About Time” (1993), and Meat Loaf’s “Rock an’ Roll” (1993). As she saw her father observe others to emulate them, she learned. Jolie realised they were “drama queens” and their relationship improved.
In 1993, Jolie made her feature debut in the direct-to-video science-fiction sequel Cyborg 2, playing a near-human android created for corporate espionage and assassination. After a supporting part in the indie film Without Evidence (1995), she acted in her first major studio film, Hackers (1995). The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote that Jolie’s character “stands out… because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits intently at her keyboard in a see-through top.” [33] Hackers failed at the box office but gained a cult following after its video release. [34] Jolie’s breakthrough role was in Hackers.
Jolie starred in the road movie Mojave Moon (1996) after Love Is All There Is (1996). Legs, a vagrant, unites four young girls against a sexually abused teacher in Foxfire (1996). The Los Angeles Times’ Jack Mathews said, “It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight’s knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst.”
Jolie and David Duchovny featured in the 1997 Los Angeles underworld thriller Playing God. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert wrote that Jolie “finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a mobster’s] girlfriend, and maybe she is.” [39] Her next role, as a frontierswoman in the CBS miniseries True Women (1997), was even less successful. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Robert Strauss called her “horrid, a fourth-rate Scarlett O’Hara” who relies o
Fame (1998–2000)
After winning a Golden Globe for her role in TNT’s George Wallace (1997), on segregationist Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace (Gary Sinise), Jolie’s career improved. George Wallace earned positive reviews and won the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Television Film for Jolie’s portrayal of Wallace’s second wife, Cornelia. Jolie got an Emmy nomination for her performance [43].
HBO’s Gia (1998) starred Jolie as supermodel Gia Carangi. The film follows Carangi’s heroin addiction and AIDS mortality in the mid-1980s. “Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as the titular Gia, and it’s easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal—filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation—and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed.” [44] Jolie won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for the second year in a row. She earned her first SAG Award [45].
Jolie often stayed in character between scenes in her early films, following Lee Strasberg’s style. While filming Gia, she told her husband, Jonny Lee Miller, that she would not be able to call him: “I’d tell him: ‘I’m alone; I’m dying; I’m gay; I’m not going to see you for weeks.’”[46] After Gia wrapped, she briefly gave up acting because she felt she had “nothing else to give.” [16] She separated from Miller and moved to New York, where she took night classes at New York University to study directing and screenwriting.
After Hell’s Kitchen (1998), Jolie appeared in Playing by Heart (1998) with Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, and Ryan Phillippe. The film received mostly positive reviews, with San Francisco Chronicle critic Peter Stack writing, “Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she’s willing to gamble.” [47] She won the National Board of Review Breakthrough Performance Award.
Jolie, John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchet featured in Pushing Tin in 1999. Jolie’s character, Thornton’s seductive wife, was particularly criticised by critics. Desson Howe of The Washington Post called her “a completely ludicrous writer’s creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away from home.” [49] Jolie then co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector (1999). Though critically panned, the film made $151.5 million worldwide [50]. According to Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press, “Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast.”[51].
In Girl, Interrupted (1999), Jolie played Lisa, a psychopathic mental patient. In 2000, she received her third Golden Globe, second SAG, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Emanuel Levy wrote for Variety, “Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna’s rehabilitation.” [53]
“All she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down, modelling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively around her teeth,” wrote The Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter of Jolie’s 2000 summer blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, which grossed $237.2 million internationally.
Global fame (2001–2004)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made Jolie a global sensation in 2001. To play archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft in the film, she had to master an English accent and martial skills. “Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coolth,” Newsday’s John Anderson wrote, “Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coolth.” [55] The film was a worldwide hit, earning $274.7 million [50].
Jolie played Antonio Banderas’ mail-order wife in Original Sin (2001), the first of several critically and commercially unsuccessful films. Jolie’s choice of Life or Something Like It (2002), a romantic comedy, was unique, according to New York Times reviewer Elvis Mitchell. Salon magazine’s Allen Barra called her ambitious newscaster character a rare attempt at playing a conventional women’s role, noting that her performance “doesn’t get off the ground until a scene where she goes punk and leads a group of striking bus workers in singing ‘Satisfaction’”.[57] Despite her lack of box office success, Jolie remained in demand as an actress, earning $10–15 million in 2002.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), starring Jolie, earned $156.5 million at the international movie office [50]. She also appeared in Korn’s “Did My Time” music video to promote the sequel. Her next picture, Beyond Borders (2003), was about a socialite who joins Clive Owen’s humanitarian worker. The film was a critical failure, but Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her” [60].
Four 2004 films featured Jolie. In Taking Lives, she played an FBI profiler helping Montreal police catch a serial killer. The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt wrote, “Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour.” [61] Jolie also voiced her first family film, DreamWorks’ Shark T. Her supporting role as Queen Olympias in Oliver Stone’s Alexander, about Alexander the Great, was met with mixed reviews, particularly her Slavic accent.[57] The film failed in North America due to disapproval of Alexander’s bisexuality,[62], but it grossed $167.3 million internationally.
2005–2010 actress
Jolie returned to movie office success in 2005 with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which she and Brad Pitt played a bored married couple who discover they are both assassins. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year and Jolie’s highest-grossing live-action film for the next decade, grossing $478.2 million worldwide. Star Tribune critic Colin Covert wrote, “While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars’ thermonuclear screen chemistry.”
Jolie played Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart (2007) after appearing in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006) as a CIA officer’s mistreated wife. The film recounts Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and death in Pakistan. The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett called Jolie’s performance “well-measured and moving,” played “with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent.” She was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In Beowulf (2007), Jolie motion-captured Grendel’s mother. It grossed $196.4 million worldwide.
Jolie starred alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the action film Wanted (2008), which grossed $341.4 million worldwide and received mostly positive reviews.
In Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2008), Christine Collins is reunited with her stolen son in 1928 Los Angeles only to discover he is an impostor. “Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, the scenes when one patronising male authority figure after another belittles her at their peril,” wrote Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. [73] She was nominated for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Academy Award for Best Actress. [74][75][76][77] Jolie voiced Tigress in DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda (2008), the first film in a major family franchise.
Jolie’s first film after her mother’s 2007 death was the 2010 thriller Salt, in which she played a CIA agent who flees after being accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. After a Columbia Pictures executive proposed Jolie for the part, agent Salt was gender-changed. Salt grossed $293.5 million worldwide, and Empire critic William Thomas said, “When it comes to selling incredible, crazy, death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business.” [81]
The Tourist (2010) featured Jolie and Johnny Depp. The film was a critical failure, but Roger Ebert defended Jolie’s performance, saying she “does her darndest” and “plays her femme fatale with flat-out, drop-dead sexuality.” [83] The film did well at the international box office,[84] cementing Jolie’s appeal to international audiences. [85] She received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance, which prompted speculation that it had been given solely to enshrine her.
Expanded directing (2011–2017)
Jolie directed her first feature film, In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a love story between a Serb soldier and a Bosniak prisoner set during the 1992–95 Bosnian War, after directing the National Education Association-distributed documentary A Place in Time (2007). After twice visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, she conceived the film to rekindle attention for the survivors. [88] To ensure authenticity, she cast only actors from the former Yugoslavia, including Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović, and incorporated their wartime experiences into her screenplay. [89] The film received mixed reviews; Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Jolie deserves significant credit f

After a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, Jolie featured in Maleficent (2014), a live-action remake of Sleeping Beauty. The Hollywood Reporter’s Sherri Linden called Jolie the “heart and soul” of the film, adding that she “doesn’t chew the estimable scenery in Maleficent—she infuses it, wielding a magnetic and effortless power.” [93] Maleficent’s opening weekend grossed nearly $70 million in North America and over $100 million in other markets, marking Joli’s biggest opening weekend.
Jolie directed her second film, Unbroken (2014), about Louis Zamperini (1917–2014), a former Olympic track star and World War II soldier who survived an aircraft accident and two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She also produced under her Jolie Pas banner.[96] Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of the same name, the film was scripted by the Coen brothers and starred Jack O’Connell. After a positive early reception, Unbroken was considered a likely Best Picture and Best Director contender,[97][98], but it ultimately received mixed reviews and little award recognition,[99] though the National Board of Review and t
Jolie’s next film, By the Sea (2015), was a marital drama starring Brad Pitt and her. Jolie’s script, inspired by her mother’s life, was highly personal. However, critics called it a “vanity project” and noted its lack of genuine emotion. Stephanie Merry of The Washington Post wrote, “By the Sea is dazzlingly gorgeous, as are its stars. But peeling back layer upon layer of exquisite ennui reveals nothing but emptiness, sprinkled with stilted sentiments.”[106] Despite starring two of Hollywood’s top actors, the film was only released in limited theatres.
Jolie seldom acted due to her humanitarian activity. She again combined both hobbies in First They Killed My Father (2017), a drama set during Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge era. She directed and co-wrote the screenplay with her old friend Loung Ung, whose memoirs on the regime’s child labour camps were its primary material. The film was produced directly for Netflix, allowing for an exclusively Khmer cast and script. Rafer Guzmán of Newsday called Jolie a “skilled and sensitive filmmaker” for “convincingly depict[ing] the illogical hell of the Khmer Rouge era”.[108] It was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.
(2019–present) Mixed reviews
Jolie reprised her role as Maleficent in the Disney fantasy sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), which received negative reviews but grossed $490 million worldwide. [111][112][113] The following year, she appeared alongside David Oyelowo as grieving parents to Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in the fantasy film Come Away. [114] Jolie played a smokejumper in Taylor Sheridan’s a In the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals, Jolie played Thena, a warrior with post-traumatic stress disorder. [115][116] The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey said Jolie’s “bare-knuckled performance… easily outclasses the film that contains it”. The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday called Jolie’s performance “touching naivete” in her November 2021 review.
Jolie will direct, write, and produce Alessandro Baricco’s novel Without Blood. It stars Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir. [121] She will feature in Pablo Larraín’s historical drama Maria, about opera singer Maria Callas. [122] She will produce and star in the thriller The Kept, based on James Scott’s novel.
Humanitarian work
UNHCR ambassadorship
After filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, Jolie contacted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots and visited refugee camps around the world to learn more.
In the months that followed, Jolie returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where she donated $1 million in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal, [126][127] the largest donation UNHCR had ever received from a private individual. [128] She covered all mission costs and lived and worked in the same conditions as UNHCR field staff. [124] She was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.
Over the next decade, she went on more than 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced people in over 30 countries. [130] In 2002, when asked what she wanted to achieve, she said, “Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon.” [126] To that end, her 2001–02 field visits were chronicled in her book Notes from My Travels, published in October 2003 in conjunction with
Jolie visited “forgotten emergencies”—crises that media attention had shifted away from—such as Sudan’s Darfur region during the Darfur conflict, the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War, where she met privately with U.S. troops and other multinational forces, and Kabul during the Afghan war, where three aid workers were murdered in the mid-1990s. As of May 2014, Jolie has a Cirrus SR22 and a Cessna 208 Caravan.
After 10 years as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie became the first Special Envoy to High Commissioner António Guterres on April 17, 2012. In her expanded role, she was authorised to represent Guterres and UNHCR at the diplomatic level, with a focus on major refugee crises. [138] In the months following her promotion, she made her first visit as Special Envoy—her third overall—to Ecuador, where she met with Colombian refugees,[139] and she accompanied Guterres on a week-long tour of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq to assess the situation of Syrian refugees.
In December 2022, Jolie resigned as ambassador, promising to continue advocating for refugees.
Conservation and community growth
Jolie bought a Cambodian residence in 2003 to link her adoptive kid to his ancestry. The traditional residence in Battambang, northeastern Cambodia, was next to Samlout national park in the Cardamom highlands, where poachers threatened rare wildlife. On July 31, 2005, King Norodom Sihamoni granted Angelina Cambodian citizenship for her conservation efforts. She acquired the park’s 60,000 hectares and created the Maddox Jolie Project, a wildlife sanctuary named for her son.
In November 2006, Jolie expanded the project—renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP)—to create Asia’s first Millennium Village in accordance with UN development goals. [145] She was inspired by a meeting with Millennium Promise founder Jeffrey Sachs at the 2005 and 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, where she was an invited speaker. The 2005 MTV program The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa accompanied them to a Millennium Village in western Kenya. By mid-2007, 6,000 people and 72 employees—including former poachers working as rangers—lived and worked at MJP in 10 formerly secluded communities. Jolie supported the schools, roads, and soy milk plant. MJP field headquarters is her home.

Jolie became patron of the Kalahari desert animal orphanage and medical institution Harnas animal Foundation after filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia. In December 2010, Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, founded the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support conservation efforts by the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature reserve in the Kalahari. [147] In honour of their Namibian-born daughter, they have funded large-animal conservation projects, a free health clinic, housing, and a school.
Child immigration and education
“As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that’s the way to move the ball,” Jolie said of her 2003 lobbying in Washington for the “Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2005” and other legislation to help child immigrants and other vulnerable children in the U.S. and abroad. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children[152][155].
Jolie promotes children’s education.She co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which offers policy and money to conflict-affected children’s education initiatives.In its initial year, the alliance financed education programs for Iraqi refugee children, Darfur youth, and rural Afghan girls.[156] The partnership has collaborated with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Universal Education, founded by the partnership’s co-chair, economist Gene Sperling, to develop education policies and make recommendations to UN agencies, G8 development agencies, and the World Bank.[157] Since April 2013, the partnership has received all earnings from Jolie’s high-end jewellery line, Style of Jolie.At the 2013 Women in the World Summit, Jolie inaugurated the Malala Fund, a grant system founded by Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, and donated over $200,000.[160]
Jolie founded a school and boarding facility for girls at Kakuma refugee camp in northeastern Kenya in 2005 and two elementary schools for girls in the returnee settlements Tangi and Qalai Gudar in eastern Afghanistan in March 2010 and November 2012, respectively.[163][164] Jolie developed at least eleven Cambodian schools, including Millennium Village, by 2005. The Global Health Committee manages both hospitals.
On September 2, 2021, Jolie and Amnesty International released Know Your Rights and Claim Them, a children’s rights book, to teach teens how to think critically about what they read and distinguish good journalism from bad. She wrote the book alongside British human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren.[169]
Women’s rights
Jolie organized a conference on international law and justice at CFR headquarters after joining in June 2007[170] and financed many CFR special publications, including “Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities.”[141][153] She founded the Jolie Legal Fellowship in January 2011 to fund lawyers and attorneys to promote human rights in their country.[172] Jolie Legal Fellows have supported child protection in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and inclusive democracy in Libya after the 2011 revolution.[171][172][173]
Jolie led the UK government’s 2013 G8 presidential campaign against sexual assault in wartime combat zones. Her Bosnian war play In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) spurred Foreign Secretary William Hague to start the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) alongside her in May 2012.[175] PSVI promotes international cooperation and awareness to support UK government efforts.[174] Jolie spoke on the matter at the G8 foreign ministers conference [176], when the participating states signed a historic declaration [174], and before the UN security council, which approved the biggest resolution on the problem to date.[177] She co-chaired the four-day Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in June 2014, which culminated in a 151-nation agreement.[179]
Jolie met international policy specialists Chloe Dalton and Arminka Helic, Hague’s special aides, through the PSVI. Their alliance, Jolie Pitt Dalton Helic, promotes women’s rights and worldwide justice.[180] Jolie became a visiting professor at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Women, Peace, and Security in May 2016 to contribute to a postgraduate degree program she had created with Hague the year before.[179] Jolie and Zahara attended the Senate presentation of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act in February 2022 in Washington, D.C.[182] She collaborated with bill supporters.[182] Kayden’s Law promotes trauma-informed court processes, legal standards, and judicial training to reduce child damage.[183]
In September 2020, Jolie donated to two London youngsters who were selling lemonade to collect money for Yemen, which was on the brink of a humanitarian calamity due to the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels.[184] Jolie visited Ukrainian children at the Vatican Children’s Hospital Bambino Gesù in March 2022, a month after Russia invaded Ukraine. “I am praying for an end to the war,” Jolie told the doctors. Only this can halt the misery and fleeing from the combat zone. It’s frightening to witness youngsters suffer loss, illness, and trauma.”[185] Jolie saw more displaced and hospitalised children in Lviv, Ukraine in May 2022.
Honours and recognition
Jolie’s humanitarian activity is well-known. She earned the Church World Service’s Immigration and Refugee Program’s first Humanitarian Award in August 2002 and the UN Correspondents Association’s first Citizen of the World Award in October 2003.[189] She got the UNA-USA Global Humanitarian Award in October 2005 [190] and the International Rescue Committee Freedom Award in November 2007.[191] In celebration of her decade as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, António Guterres awarded Jolie a gold pin in October 2011.[192]
Jolie won the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy Board of Governors in November 2013.[193][194] She was made an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in June 2014 for her work on UK foreign policy and ending wartime sexual assault.[195][196] In October, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Jolie her honorary damehood.[197]
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Jolie had a steady relationship from 14 to 16. “I was either going to be reckless on the streets with my boyfriend or he was going to be with me in my bedroom with my mom in the next room,” Jolie recalled of living with her mother. She chose, so I went to school every morning and safely explored my first relationship.”[198] She equated the relationship to a marriage in emotional intensity and stated the split inspired her to pursue acting at 16.[199]
Jolie dated Jonny Lee Miller, her first partner since her early teens, while shooting Hackers (1995).[16] After months apart, they married in March 1996. She wore black rubber trousers and a white T-shirt with the groom’s name in blood to her wedding.[200] Jolie called Miller “a solid man and a solid friend” after their breakup the following year.Jolie filed for divorce in February 1999 and formalised it before remarrying the following year.
On Foxfire (1996), Jolie started dating model and actress Jenny Shimizu before marrying Miller. “If I hadn’t married my husband,” she commented in 1997. She was love at first sight.”Shimizu said their connection lasted years, even though Jolie was seeing others.She told Girlfriends, a lesbian magazine, “It’s great because I love men and women.” “Of course,” Jolie said in 2003. Would I kiss and touch a lady I fell in love with tomorrow? If I loved her? Absolutely! Yes!”
Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton in Las Vegas on May 5, 2000, after a two-month engagement. They met on the set of Pushing Tin (1999) but did not date since Thornton was engaged to Laura Dern and Jolie was seeing Timothy Hutton, her co-star in Playing God (1997).Their marriage was a favourite of the entertainment industry due to their numerous public demonstrations of passion and love, including wearing one another’s blood in vials around their necks. Jolie and Thornton adopted a Cambodian kid in March 2002 but split three months later.They divorced on May 27, 2003. “It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed,” Jolie said of their divorce. We probably had nothing in common one day. And that’s terrifying but… I suppose it can happen when you become connected and don’t know yourself yet.”
In October 2005, Jolie was accused of breaking up Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. “To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive,” she remarked. I couldn’t face myself in the morning. Cheating husbands don’t appeal me.” In January 2006, Jolie announced they were expecting their first child.
The media called the pair “Brangelina” and covered their 12-year relationship internationally. Hollywood’s most glamorous duo. Before their April 2012 engagement, they had six children, three of whom were adopted. Jolie and Pitt married in Château Miraval in Correns, France, on August 23, 2014. She became “Angelina Jolie Pitt”. On September 15, 2016, they divorced after two years. Jolie filed for divorce on September 19, citing incompatibility.On April 12, 2019, they formally separated. Jolie countersued Pitt for selling her portion of a winery they owned to a third party, alleging that he physically and verbally harassed her and their children on a plane in 2016.
Children
Jolie’s six kids. Three were adopted overseas and three were born.
Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan, from a Battambang, Cambodia orphanage on March 10, 2002.Rath Vibol was born in a hamlet on August 5, 2001, Jolie and her then-husband, Billy Bob Thornton, returned to Cambodia in November 2001 to meet and apply to adopt Maddox.[The U.S. prohibited Cambodian adoptions the next month due to child trafficking suspicions.Jolie’s adoption of Maddox was legal despite her adoption facilitator’s visa fraud and money laundering convictions.She brought Maddox to Namibia to film Beyond Borders (2003).Jolie adopted Maddox alone, although she and Thornton publicised the adoption jointly.after her three-month divorce from Thornton.
On July 6, 2005, Jolie adopted six-month-old Zahara Marley from an Ethiopian orphanage. Zahara was born Yemsrach in Awasa on January 8, 2005.Jolie felt Zahara was an AIDS orphan based on her grandmother’s official statement, but Zahara’s actual mother subsequently came forward. She stated she abandoned her family when Zahara got unwell and believed Jolie was “very fortunate” to adopt her. Jolie took custody of Zahara in Ethiopia with Brad Pitt.After visiting Ethiopia earlier that year, she said they decided to adopt. After Pitt revealed his intention to adopt her children,she petitioned to officially alter their surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was approved on January 19, 2006.Pitt soon adopted Maddox and Zahara.

Jolie and Pitt had their first child in Namibia to avoid the tremendous media attention.She had Shiloh Nouvel in Swakopmund on May 27, 2006.Jean Nouvel inspired Shiloh’s middle name.Morphine made Jolie giggle hysterically during childbirth. Instead of letting paparazzi snap photos, they sold the first Shiloh photos through Getty Images to benefit charity. People and Hello! magazines bought the North American and British rights to the photographs for $4.1 and $3.5 million, respectively, a celebrity photography record. All earnings went to UNICEF.
Jolie adopted Pax Thien, a three-year-old Vietnamese orphan, on March 15, 2007.Pham Quang Sang was born in HCMC on November 29, 2003, and abandoned shortly after. Because Vietnam doesn’t allow unmarried couples to co-adopt, Jolie registered for adoption as a single parent after visiting the orphanage with Pitt in November 2006. After returning to the US, she petitioned the court to alter Pax Thien’s surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on May 31.Pitt adopted Pax February 21, 2008.
Jolie announced her twin pregnancy in Cannes 2008. Reporters and photographers camped on the seafront outside her Nice, France, beachfront hospital for two weeks. Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline were born July 12, 2008. Knox Léon honours two of the twins’ forebears, while Vivienne Marcheline honours Jolie’s mother. Knox and Vivienne’s initial photos were sold to People and Hello! for $14 million—the most expensive celebrity photos ever taken. Jolie-Pitt Foundation received all revenues.
Cancer prevention
Due to a faulty BRCA1 gene, Jolie had a preventative double mastectomy aged 37 on February 16, 2013. Her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, suffered breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, as did her grandmother. Three months after Jolie’s surgery, her aunt, who had BRCA1, died of breast cancer. Jolie had reconstructive surgery with implants and allografts after her mastectomy, which reduced her breast cancer risk to under 5%. Two years later, in March 2015, she underwent a preventative salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of an ovary and its fallopian tube) owing to her 50% chance of ovarian cancer related to the same genetic abnormality. Despite hormone supplementation, surgery caused premature menopause.
Jolie wrote op-eds for The New York Times after her mastectomy and oophorectomy to enlighten other women. She recounted her diagnoses, procedures, and personal experiences, and why she chose preventative surgery for her six children.”On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman,” Jolie stated. I’m proud of my powerful decision that doesn’t reduce my femininity.”
Jolie’s mastectomy announcement raised awareness of BRCA mutations and genetic testing.Her decision was lauded by public leaders and health advocates Jolie’s influence, dubbed “The Angelina Effect” by a Time cover story led to a “global and long-lasting” increase in BRCA gene testing: referrals tripled in Australia and doubled in the UK, parts of Canada, and India, as well as significantly increased in other European countries and the US. Jolie’s message reached the most at-risk, according to Canadian and British researchers. After the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Myriad Genetics’ BRCA gene patents in June 2013, BRCA gene testing became much cheaper.
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