Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie (Angelina Jolie Voight) was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 4, 1975. She is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is an American actress. She was eleven years old, When 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. In 1976, her parents got separated. Jolie was estranged from her father for many years. The two tried to reconcile and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).

At the age of 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director. During this period, she wore black clothing, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, She returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school. In July 2002, Jolie 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 the same year, her Father stated that she had serious mental problem, and Jolie told the media that she was not in speaking terms with her father. In February 2010, Jolie publicly reunited with her father when he visited her while filming The Tourist in Venice.

Though Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin’ to Get Out. Jolie began working as a fashion model when she was 14 years old, modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. During that time she appeared in several music videos, namely those by Lenny Kravitz (”Stand by My Woman”; 1991), Antonello Venditti (”Alta Marea”; 1991), Jeff Healey (”Lost in Your Eyes”; 1992), The Lemonheads (”It’s About Time”; 1993), and Meat Loaf (”Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through”; 1993). At the age of 16, Jolie returned to theatre and played her first role as a German dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, as she noticed his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both “drama queens”. Jolie appeared in five of her brother’s student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but her professional movie career began in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the low-budget film Cyborg 2, as Casella “Cash” Reese, a near-human robot. Her first Hollywood picture was Hackers (1995), where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller. Jolie and Miller married in year 1996 and got separated and subsequently divorced on February 3, 1999. While shooting Pushing Tin (1999) she met American actor Billy Bob Thornton, and subsequently married him on May 5, 2000. Jolie and Thornton were divorced on May 27, 2003. Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

She also starred 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). Jolie achieved wider fame after her portrayal of video game 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 has had her biggest commercial successes with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and the animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008).

Jolie’s tattoos have been the subject of much media attention. The large number of tattoos on her body have forced filmmakers to become more creative when planning nude or love scenes. Make-up has been used to cover up the tattoos in many of her productions. Jolie 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 “العزيمة” (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 has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. Jolie promotes humanitarian causes, and is noted for her work with refugees as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2006 and 2008. She was described as the world’s most beautiful woman in the 2006 “100 Most Beautiful” issue of People, voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols in 2007, and named “Most beautiful woman in the world” by Vanity Fair in 2009. The Hollywood Reporter named Jolie the highest-paid actress of 2008, earning $15 million per film. She also topped Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list in 2009; she had previously been ranked No. 14 in 2007, and No. 3 in 2008.