Angelina Jolie Voight (born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles) is an American actress, filmmaker and humanitarian activist. She made her film debut alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin’ to Get Out (1982); however, her career began in earnest a decade later, when she starred in the low-budget film Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in a major production in Hackers (1995).
She was subsequently cast to star in the biographical telefilms George Wallace (1997), for which she won her first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film, and Gia (1998), winning the Golden Globe again, only this time in the category of Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film. In 1999, she received praise from critics for her portrayal of Lisa Rowe in the film Girl, Interrupted, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
| Full name | Angelina Jolie Voight | |
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| Birth date | June 4, 1975 | |
| Birthplace | Los Angeles, California, United States | |
| Nationality | American | |
| Parents | Mother: Marcheline Bertrand Father: Jon Voight |
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| Children | 6 | |
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| Period of activity | 1982–present | |
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| Awards | ||
| Award | Received | Nominated |
| Oscar (Academy Awards) | 1 | 2 |
| BAFTAs | 0 | 2 |
| Primetime Emmy Awards | 0 | 2 |
| Golden Globe Awards | 3 | 8 |
| Screen Actors Guild Awards | 2 | 4 |
| Total | 60 | 148 |
| Official website | ||
| Angelinajolie.com | ||
Angelina Jolie gained international recognition in 2001 for playing video game heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, thus establishing herself among Hollywood’s leading actresses. She continued her career as an “action star” in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt and The Tourist (both 2010). The actress was praised by critics for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), which earned her her second Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category. Her biggest commercial success came with the fantasy film Maleficent (2014). Beginning in the 2010s, she expanded her career into directing, writing and producing, directing the war dramas In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) and Unbroken (2014). As of April 2019, she is one of the highest-grossing actresses of all time in North America, as well as the top 110 overall, with her films making over $2.17 billion.
In addition to her film work, Angelina Jolie is known for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and an honorary Dame of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG), among other accolades. She promotes various causes, including environmental conservation, education and women’s rights, and is best known for her advocacy on behalf of refugees, having been appointed Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
As a public figure, Jolie is cited as one of the most influential and powerful people in the American entertainment industry, as well as the most beautiful woman in the world, by various media, which consider her a sex symbol. In 2006, People magazine named her the Most Beautiful Person in the World, while Empire and Esquire named her the Sexiest Movie Star Ever. She was named the world’s most powerful celebrity by Forbes in 2009, as well as the world’s most powerful actress from 2006 to 2008 and from 2011 to 2013. In the years 2009, 2011 and 2013, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Her personal life is the subject of constant media attention. She is divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt, with whom she has six children, three of whom were adopted.
Early years and adolescence of Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven Voight and goddaughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father’s side, she is of Slovak and German descent; on the other hand, her mother had French, Dutch and German ancestry. Like her mother, Jolie claimed to be part Iroquois, in addition to having a remote Huronian indigenous ancestor, born in 1649.
After her parents’ separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother moved in with their mother, who had abandoned her artistic ambitions to focus on raising her children. As a child, Jolie often watched movies with her mother, and it was this, rather than her father’s successful career, that sparked her interest in acting; although, at the age of five, she had participated in the film Lookin ‘to Get Out (1982), alongside Voight. At the age of six, Bertrand and his partner, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los Angeles five years later.
Then, Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in Los Angeles, where she studied for two years and, in that time, appeared in several theater productions; she also attended Beverly Hills High School, where she felt isolated from the children of wealthier families in the area, as her mother had a more modest income. She was teased by other students, who made fun of her for being extremely thin and wearing glasses and braces.
At her mother’s insistence, she considered pursuing a modeling career; however, his first attempts at the profession proved to be unsuccessful. Jolie abandoned her acting classes and became interested in the profession of the funeral director, taking correspondence courses on how to prepare bodies for funerals. Subsequently, she transferred to Moreno High School, an alternative school, where she became a “weird punk”, and dyed her hair purple, wore black clothes and participated in circles with her then-boyfriend, with whom she lived together and with whom experienced sadomasochism. At sixteen, after the relationship ended, Jolie graduated from school and rented her own apartment, before returning to acting studies. In 2004, referring to this period, she remarked: “I’m still deep down — and always will be — just a punk girl with tattoos”.
While still in her teens, Jolie found it difficult to connect emotionally with other people and, as a result, self-harmed, of which she commented: “For some reason, the ritual of me getting cut and feeling the pain, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic for me”. She also struggled with insomnia and an eating disorder, and began experimenting with drugs; by age twenty, she had used “almost every drug possible,” particularly heroin.
She also suffered episodes of depression and planned to commit suicide twice, at age nineteen and again at age twenty-two, the age at which she tried to hire an assassin to kill her. At age 24, she had a nervous breakdown; as a result, she was committed for 72 hours to the psychiatric ward at the UCLA Medical Center. Two years later, after adopting her first child, she found stability in her life, saying, “I knew that once I committed to Maddox [her son], I would never go back to being self-destructive.”
Jon Voight abandoned the family when Jolie was less than a year old, eventually culminating in a dysfunctional relationship between them. From then on, their moments together were rare and, in general, only when they appeared in public. However, they eventually reconciled when acting together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) but, nevertheless, the relationship deteriorated again. So, the actress decided to legally remove the last name “Voight” to just her middle name, which she had already used for some time as a stage name; the name change was granted on September 12, 2002.
Jon then went public with their disagreement during an appearance on Access Hollywood, in which he claimed that his daughter had “serious mental issues”. At that point, Marcheline Bertrand and James Haven also broke contact with Jon, going six and a half years without establishing contact; however, they began to rebuild their relationship close to Bertrand’s death on January 27, 2007, from ovarian cancer. Three years later, Voight’s reconciliation with Jolie became public.
Angelina Jolie career
1991–1997: First works
Jolie committed to acting professionally at age sixteen; however, initially, she found it difficult to pass casting tests, as casting producers noted that her behavior was “too dark”. She appeared in five of her brother’s student films, made while they attended the USC School of Cinema-Television, as well as several music videos, notably Lenny Kravitz’s “Stand by My Woman” (1991); “Alta Marea”, by Antonello Venditti (1991); “It’s About Time” (1993) by The Lemonheads; and Meat Loaf’s “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” (1993).
In addition, she began her professional film career in 1993, when she played her first lead role in the science fiction sequel Cyborg 2, as an “almost human” robot designed for corporate espionage and assassination. She was so disappointed with the film that she didn’t audition for another year. After a supporting role in Without Evidence (1995), she starred in the film Hackers (1995).
Janet Maslin of the New York Times noted that the actress stood out from her co-stars. The production failed to profit at the box office but developed a cult following after its DVD release. After having starred in Love Is All There Is (1996), a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the actress appeared in the film Mojave Moon (1996); Of her performance in this, The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Jolie, an actress the camera truly adores, reveals a comedic talent and the kind of passionate sexuality that makes her utterly credible and that Danny Aiello’s character would drop everything just to have the chance to be with her”.
In 1997, Angelina Jolie starred in the film Playing God, set in the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, with David Duchovny. The production was not well received by critics; Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that the actress “finds a certain zest in a role that is often tough and aggressive, she seems too cool to be the girlfriend [of a mobster], and maybe she is”. She also played a stripper who abandons her performance to tour New York City in the music video for “Anybody Seen My Baby?” by The Rolling Stones.
1998–2000: Revelation
Her career prospects began to improve after the actress won a Golden Globe for her performance as Cornelia in the 1997 George Wallace biopic, in which she was hailed as “a standout in the production” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The film was equally well received by critics and won, among other awards, the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Television Film. Consequently, she was also nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film.
Her first big breakthrough came when she played supermodel Gia Carangi in the telefilm Gia (1998), which chronicles the destruction of Carangi’s life and career as a result of her heroin addiction, decline and death from AIDS in the mid-1990s. 1980. Vanessa Vance of Reel.com retrospectively noted, “Jolie gained widespread recognition for her role as Gia, and it’s easy to see why. She’s fierce in her performance—filling her with edginess, charm, and desperation—and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful ‘disaster’ [about a person’s life] ever filmed.” For the second consecutive year, the actress won a Golden Globe, this time for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film, and her first Screen Actors Guild Award, and was nominated for an Emmy in the same category.
Following Lee Strasberg’s The Method, Jolie preferred to stay in character even after her scenes in many of her early films were shot, and as a result, she gained a reputation for being difficult to handle. After filming for Gia ended, she briefly gave up acting because she felt she had “nothing left to give”. She separated from her husband Jonny Lee Miller and moved to New York, where she took night classes in directing and screenwriting at New York University. Emboldened by her Golden Globe win for George Wallace and the positive critical reception for Gia, she returned to her career. After appearing in the film Hell’s Kitchen (1998), she starred in Playing by Heart (1998), which received predominantly positive reviews and for which she was particularly praised, winning the Breakthrough Actress award from the National Board of Review.
In 1999, she starred in the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, opposite Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, which received a mixed reception from critics, and her character — Thornton’s seductive wife — was particularly panned. Angelina Jolie co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector (1999), playing a police officer who reluctantly helps a quadriplegic detective track down a serial killer. The film grossed $151.5 million worldwide, but received low critical ratings. Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press concluded: “Jolie, while she is always pleasant to look at, has been woefully poorly cast”; Pablo Villaça added: “With better material in hand, Jolie would certainly have stood out”.
Next, the actress played Lisa Rowe, a sociopathic patient, in Girl, Interrupted (1999), an adaptation of the eponymous book by Susanna Kaysen. While the film was expected to mark a major comeback for the career of Winona Ryder, who played the lead character, it was Jolie who received wide acclaim from film critics and made a big splash in the Hollywood industry. For Variety, Emanuel Levy noted: “Jolie is excellent as the extravagant and irresponsible girl”.
In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote that “Jolie’s fierce, soulful performance captures the haunting allure of this brutal, adventurous film”. Critic Roger Ebert praised her performance, saying, “The actress is emerging as one of the great wild spirits of film today, a loose cannon who somehow has deadly aim.” As a result, she won her third Golden Globe, her second Screen Actors Guild and her first Critics Choice and Oscar, all in the category of Best Supporting Actress, in addition to being awarded the trophy for Actress of the Year by the Hollywood Film Festival and Best Supporting Actress by the National Association of Theater Owners.
“Her performances in Girl, Interrupted and especially Gia can be the most powerful [American actor] interpretations of the last twenty years. It is impossible to imagine any other actress in these roles; at her best, Jolie makes almost every other actress of her generation look shy”.
Allen Barra, critic of Salon.com, praising Jolie’s performances
In 2000, she appeared in Gone in 60 Seconds, which became her highest-grossing film to date, earning $237.2 million internationally, and in which she had a small part as a mechanic and ex-girlfriend of a thief car played by Nicolas Cage. Regarding the participation of the actress, Stephen Hunter, for the Washington Post, wrote: “All she does in this film is stand and move those full and pulsating lips that nestle so provocatively in her teeth”.
2001-2004: International recognition
Despite being highly praised for her acting skills, Jolie had not found films that appealed to a wide audience; however, she achieved international recognition when she landed the role of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2001). In this adaptation of the popular video game series, the actress was required to learn an English accent and undergo extensive martial arts training.
Her casting for the role generated controversy because, according to those who were against it, she did not have the appropriate physique, moreover, she was an American playing an originally British character, she had tattoos and other factors related to her personal life which, theoretically, made her unsuitable for the role. In view of this, the director of the film, Simon West, defended it from when the first media hype was formed, causing it to gradually dissipate. During filming, the actress dismissed stuntmen for the action scenes, and this caused her to be injured.
Although the film generated negative reviews, she was generally praised for her performance, particularly her physique. According to the critical consensus of Rotten Tomatoes, “Angelina Jolie is perfect for the role of Lara Croft, but [even] she can’t save the film from a nonsensical plot and action sequences without emotional impact”; Sebastian Zavala agreed, saying that the actress’ presence on camera “is so magnetic”.
John Anderson, from the Newsday newspaper, commented: “Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coldness.” Marcelo Forlani, in his review of Omelete, considered her perfect for the role. The film was an international success at the box office, earning $274.7 million worldwide, and became the highest-grossing female-led film opening at $48 million in three days; after three weeks, it crossed the hundred million barrier. The film earned Jolie an international reputation as an “action star,” and film critic Scott Mendelson of Forbes published an article whose title refers to the actress as the “first female movie star of the blockbuster action genre”.
Jolie starred as the mail-order bride of Antonio Banderas’ character in Original Sin (2001). New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell questioned her decision to pursue the career with “soft-core nonsense”. The romantic comedy Life or Something Like It (2002), was similarly unsuccessful. In 2002, she established herself among the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, earning between ten and fifteen million dollars per film.
Angelina Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), which was not as profitable as the original, earning $156.5 million at the international box office; in addition, she starred in the music video for Korn’s “Did My Time”, used to promote the sequel. Her next film was Beyond Borders (2003), in which she played a socialite who has a relationship with an aid worker played by Clive Owen. Despite not doing well at the box office, the film is the first of several projects that have seen Jolie join humanitarian causes. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times recognized the actress’s ability to “bring emotion and credibility to the role”.
In 2004, four films with Jolie were released. She first stars in the thriller Taking Lives as an FBI profiler called in to help Montreal police apprehend a serial killer. The film received mixed reviews; Kirk Honeycutt, for The Hollywood Reporter, concluded: “Jolie plays a role that [she] definitely feels like something she’s done before, but adds an unmistakable dash of emotion and glamour”.
She later made a brief appearance in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a sci-fi adventure filmed entirely with the actors in front of chroma key, and dubbed her first children’s film, the animated Shark Tale. Her supporting role as Queen Olympias of Epirus in Alexander, About the Life of Alexander the Great, was met with mixed reception, particularly regarding her Slavic accent. Commercially, the film flopped in North America, causing director Oliver Stone to attribute it to disapproval of Alexander’s depiction of bisexuality, but it managed to take in a total of $167.3 million internationally.
2005–2010: Commercial and critical success
In 2005, Jolie was cast in the action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which she starred alongside Brad Pitt, as a couple who discover they are both secret killers. The film received mixed reviews but was generally praised for the chemistry between the lead actors, and it became a box office success. Roger Ebert said that “what makes the film work is that Pitt and Jolie have fun together on screen and are able to find a rhythm that allows them to be downplayed and amusing even during the most alarming developments”. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote: “This is Brad and Angelina’s show and not much else. That’s too bad, because both actors are capable of more”. Grossing $478.2 million worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith went to the seventh-highest-grossing of the year and remained Jolie’s highest-grossing action film well into the next decade.
After a supporting role as the neglected wife of a CIA officer in The Good Shepherd (2006), Jolie starred as Mariane Pearl in the documentary drama A Mighty Heart (2007). Based on the book of the same name, the film chronicles the kidnapping and murder of her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. Although Pearl personally chose Jolie for the role, racial slurs and accusations of blackface arose.
The actress’s performance was widely praised, including by The Hollywood Reporter, with analyst Ray Bennett describing it as “well measured and moving,” and performed “with respect”. She received Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, Critics Choice Movie, Independent Spirit, Satellite and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress, and also directed the documentary A Place in Time. Still in 2007, she played Grendel’s mother in the epic Beowulf, created through motion capture. The film was critically and commercially well received, taking in $196.4 million worldwide.”
In 2008, Angelina Jolie was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, earning between fifteen and twenty million dollars per film. While other actresses were forced to take pay cuts in previous years, the box office success Jolie brought to the films she starred in allowed her to earn as much as twenty million, plus a percentage. She starred, opposite James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, in the action film Wanted (2008), which grossed $341.4 million worldwide.
The film received predominantly favorable reviews. Writing for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis noted that “Jolie was perfectly cast as a super-scary, seemingly amoral assassin”. Brazilian Pablo Villaça, from Cinema em Cena, wrote that “she goes through the film on autopilot, trusting her beauty to transform Fox [her character] into a relevant figure – and she succeeds (observe, for example, the very sensual way in which she lies on a moving train and you will see an actress fully aware of the power of her body over the spectator)”. Time ranked it fifth among the top ten performers of the year.
Jolie took the lead role in Clint Eastwood’s drama Changeling (2008). Based on the Wineville Crimes, which took place in Los Angeles in 1928, the film centers on Christine Collins, a woman who is reunited with a boy who would be her missing son, soon realizing that he, in fact, is not her son. The actress received acclaim from specialized critics; Amir Labaki, in his written review for Folha de S.Paulo, described this as “her best role, […] Jolie was never better,” and added: “Fury and fragility, intelligence and emotion, temper and skepticism merge into a performance bigger than awards, bigger than movies, bigger than life”.
Pablo Villaça praised the actress, stating that she “sensibly portrays the pain of a mother who faces the worst tragedy imaginable for someone who has children. In fact, Jolie’s performance is so efficient that, even if the film does not try to explain the actions of the woman, we understand why she accepts to take a strange child home”.
Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter noted that “she presents a powerful emotional display as a tenacious woman who gathers strength over the forces that oppose her, and reminds us that there is nothing as fierce as a mother protecting her child”. Angelina Jolie received BAFTA, Critics Choice Movie, Empire, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Oscar nominations for Best Actress and won the Satellite and Saturn awards in the same category. She also lent her voice to the animation Kung Fu Panda ( 2008), her first lead role in a children’s franchise, later reprising her role in the sequels Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016).
After her mother’s death in 2007, Angelina Jolie began to appear in fewer films, explaining that her motivation to be an actress stemmed from her mother’s acting ambitions. Her first film in two years was the spy thriller Salt (2010), in which she starred as a CIA agent who is pursued after she is accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. Originally written for a male character, with Tom Cruise set to star, Agent Salt underwent a gender change after a Columbia Pictures executive suggested Jolie for the role. With revenues of 293.5 million dollars, it became an international success. The film received generally positive reviews, with Jolie’s performance in particular earning praise. Critic William Thomas of Empire magazine commented, “When it comes to selling incredible, crazy and death-defying fantasies, Jolie has few competitors in the action business.”
Starred alongside Johnny Depp in the action film The Tourist (2010), which received unfavorable reviews from critics, although Roger Ebert defended Jolie’s performance, stating that she “does her most terrible version” and “plays her femme fatale”. with intensity and with sweeping sexuality”. Despite a slow start at the US box office, the film grossed $278.3 million worldwide, boosting Jolie’s appeal to international audiences. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
Also in 2010, speculation arose that she would play Marilyn Monroe in the film The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his friend Marilyn, based on the homonymous book by Andrew O’Hagan, whose story follows Monroe’s last two years, seen from the perspective of her pet dog, a gift from Frank Sinatra in 1960. George Clooney would play Sinatra. Regardless, there was no further response as to whether production would take place.
2011–present: Professional expansion
In 2011, she made her debut as a film director in In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a love story between a Serbian soldier and a Bosnian prisoner during the Bosnian War (1992-95). She directed the film to revive attention for survivors, having visited Bosnia and Herzegovina twice in her role as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.
To ensure authenticity, the film had only actors from the former Yugoslavia — including Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović — and incorporated their war experiences into its script. Upon release, it received mixed reviews. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerful, oppressive atmosphere and enacting the horrific events so believably, even if it’s those very forces that will make people not want to see what’s going on what’s on the screen”. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Jolie was named an honorary citizen of Sarajevo for raising awareness of the war.
“I’ve always been attracted to war movies. I’ve always been moved by them, but until then, I never wanted to drive one. I was going through a period where I was thinking a lot about my ten years traveling in these [war] situations and all the people I met who had been through conflicts and how their lives were affected”.
Jolie when talking about directorial debut.
She was considered for the roles of Meredith Vickers in Prometheus, Tiffany Maxwell in Silver Linings Playbook and Dr. Ryan Stone in Gravity, but Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence and Sandra Bullock, respectively, ended up being cast. After being absent from cinema for three and a half years, she starred in Maleficent (2014), a live-action re-imagining of the animated film Sleeping Beauty (1959). Critical reception was mixed, but the actress’s performance in the titular role was praised.
Sherri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter stated that Jolie “is the heart and soul” of the film, “and exerts an effortless, magnetic power”. In its opening weekend, Maleficent earned nearly seventy million at the US box office and over one hundred million in other markets, marking Jolie’s appeal to audiences of all ages in action and fantasy films. Ultimately, it grossed $757.8 million worldwide, making it the fourth highest-grossing film of the year and the highest-grossing film of the actress’s career.
Angelina Jolie completed her second directorial effort on Unbroken (2014), based on the biography of Louis Zamperini (1917-2014), a former Olympic athlete who survived a plane crash during World War II and spent two years as a prisoner of war in a Japanese war camp.
The film’s screenplay was written by the Coen brothers, and Jack O’Connell starred as Zamperini. Initially, there was a positive reception, so it was considered as a likely Oscar contender for the Best Picture and Best Director categories; however, it subsequently ended up receiving mixed reviews and few recognition awards, although it was named one of the best films of the year by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. Justin Chang of Variety noted that the film is “impeccably crafted with sobriety,” but considered it “an extraordinary story told in dutiful, not exceptional terms”. Financially, Unbroken surpassed industry expectations in its opening weekend, eventually earning over $163 million worldwide.
Her next work as a filmmaker was on the marital drama By the Sea (2015), in which she starred with her then-husband Brad Pitt, marking their first collaboration since 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The film was a deeply personal project for Jolie, who was inspired by her own mother’s life. Critics, however, singled it out as a “vanity project,” causing it to garner a generally poor reception. Despite starring two of Hollywood’s top actors, the film only received a limited release.
First They Killed My Father, the adaptation of the eponymous book by Loung Ung, premiered on Netflix in late 2016. In addition to directing the film, Jolie co-wrote its screenplay with Ung, a human rights activist who survived the Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia. Describing her as a “skilled and sensitive filmmaker,” Newsday’s Rafer Guzmán praised her for “convincingly portraying [the] illogical hell of the Khmer Rouge era”. The work was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Film in a non-English language.
Jolie reprised the role of Maleficent in Mistress of Evil (2019), which received unfavorable reviews from critics but grossed $490 million. Her next work will be on Come Away and Those Who Wish Me Dead. She has also committed to producing and starring in an adaptation of James Scott’s novel The Kept (2014) and has been hired to play Thena in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals.
Humanitarian work
UNHCR Ambassador
“We cannot close ourselves to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are suffering out there. I honestly want to help. I can’t believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a meaningful life. We’d all like to believe that if we were in a bad situation, someone would help us”.
Angelina Jolie with her reasons for joining the UNHCR in 2001
Jolie first witnessed the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she said brought her a greater understanding of the world. When she finished shooting the film and returned home, she contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to obtain information about problematic places at an international level. To learn more about conditions in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around the world.
In February 2001, she made her first visit to a refugee camp, an eighteen-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania. She later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. Over the next few months, Jolie returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where she donated $1 million in response to a UNHCR international emergency appeal, the largest donation ever received from a private individual. She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field people on all her visits. Jolie was appointed Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on 27 August 2001.
Over the next decade, she participated in over forty field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over thirty countries. In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, “To bring awareness to the plight of these people, I think they should be commended for what they survived, not scorned.” To that end, his 2001-02 field visits were chronicled in his book Notes from My Travels, published in October 2003 with the release of his film Beyond Borders.
Jolie intended to visit what she called “forgotten emergencies,” crises that had lost media attention. She has been noted for traveling to war zones such as the Sudanese region of Darfur during the Darfur conflict, the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War, where she met privately with US troops and other multinational forces, and the Afghan capital Kabul during the Afghan War, where three aid workers were killed during her first visit. To help with her travels, she began taking flying lessons in 2004 with the aim of transporting aid workers and food supplies around the world; she now holds a private pilot license with an instrumental flying license and owns a Cirrus SR22 and a single-engine Cessna 208 Caravan.
On April 17, 2012, after more than a decade of service as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie was promoted to the position of Special Envoy of High Commissioner António Guterres, the first person to hold that position within the organization. In her new role, she was given the authority to represent Guterres and UNHCR at the diplomatic level, with a focus on major refugee crises. In the months following her promotion, she made her first visit as Special Envoy—the third person to do so—to Ecuador, where she met with Colombian refugees and accompanied Guterres on a week-long tour of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, to assess the situation of refugees from Syria. Since then, she has performed over a dozen field missions around the world.
Environmental conservation and community development
In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born son to his origins, Jolie purchased a home in the country in 2003. The home is located on a 39-hectare property in the northwest province of Battambang, adjacent to Samlout National Park in the Cardamom Mountains. She bought sixty thousand hectares of the park and turned the area into a wildlife preserve named after her son, the Maddox Jolie Project. In recognition of his environmental conservation efforts, King Norodom Sihamoni granted him Cambodian citizenship on July 31, 2005.
In November 2006, Jolie expanded the project — renaming it the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP) — to create Asia’s first Millennium Village, in line with the UN’s development goals. She was inspired by meeting Millennium Promise founder, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she was a guest speaker in 2005 and 2006. As of mid-2007, some 6,000 villagers and 72 employees — some of them former poachers — lived and worked at the MJP. The complex includes schools, roads and a soy milk factory, all financed by Jolie. Her home doubles as the MJP camp headquarters.
After filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia, she became a patron of the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, a wildlife orphanage and medical center in the Kalahari Desert. In December 2010, Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, founded the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support the conservation work of the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature reserve also located in the Kalahari. On behalf of their Namibian-born daughter, they funded large-animal conservation projects, as well as a free health clinic, housing and a school for the San Bushmen community in Naankuse. Both support other causes through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, created in September 2006.
Child immigration and education
Jolie has turned to causes aimed at helping immigrant children and other vulnerable children, both in the United States and in developing countries, including the “Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2005”. She began lobbying humanitarian interests in Washington in 2003, explaining: “As much as I wish I didn’t have to visit Washington, this is the only way to advance the cause”.
Since October 2008, she has co-chaired Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a network of American law firms that provide free legal assistance to unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings to the United States. Founded in collaboration between Jolie and Microsoft Corporation, by 2013 KIND became the leading provider of pro bono attorneys for immigrant children. Angelina Jolie had previously, from 2005 to 2007, funded the launch of a similar initiative, and subsequently the US Committee on Refugees and Immigrants launched the National Center for Refugees and Immigrant Children.
She also advocates for children’s education. Since founding the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in September 2007, the activist has co-chaired the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict (EPCC), which provides funding for education programs for children in conflict-affected regions. In its first year, the partnership supported education projects for Iraqi refugee children, conflict-affected youth in Darfur, and girls in rural Afghanistan, among other conflict-affected groups.
The partnership has been working closely with the Council on Foreign Relation Center for Universal Education — founded by economist Gene Sperling — who aim to establish education policies, including making recommendations to UN agencies and G8 development agencies and of the World Bank. Since April 2013, all proceeds from Jolie’s “high-end Jolie” and “Style of Jolie” jewelry collections have benefited the work of the partnership.
Jolie funded a girls’ school and boarding school in Kakuma refugee camp in northwest Kenya, which opened in 2005, and two primary schools for girls in Tangi and Qalai Gudar returnee settlements in eastern Afghanistan, which opened in March 2010 and November 2012, respectively. In addition to the installations made by Millennium Village in Cambodia, the activist had already built at least ten other schools in the country in 2005.
On February 2006, she opened the Maddox Chivan Children’s Center, a medical and educational center that assists children affected by HIV in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. In Sebeta, Ethiopia, the birthplace of her eldest daughter, she funds the Zahara Children’s Center, which opened in 2015 and aims to educate children suffering from HIV or tuberculosis. Both centers are managed by the Global Health Committee.
Jolie expressed her support for Malala Yousafzai, an activist for women’s human rights and access to education for teenagers in Pakistan, known for being shot by Taliban members after she blogged for the BBC in Urdu about what life was like lives of people under the Taliban regime. After the Yousafzai targeting on October 9, 2012, Jolie wrote an article for The Daily Beast entitled “We All Are Malala” in which she documented her reaction to the incident and expressed her support for girls’ education in Pakistan.
The following year, she delivered a speech at the World Summit for Women, in which she expressed her support for Yousafzai and announced the start of the Malala Fund, a grant system designed to support students in Pakistan. In addition, she personally contributed over two hundred thousand dollars to the Fund and also honored Yousafzai by opening a school for girls in Pakistan.
Human rights and women’s rights
After joining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June 2007, Jolie hosted a conference on international law and justice at CFR headquarters and funded several special reports, including “Intervention to Stop Genocide and Atrocities in pasta”. In January 2011, she officiated the Jolie Legal Fellowship, a network of lawyers who are sponsored to defend the continuity of human rights in their home countries. Member lawyers, called the Jolie Legal Fellows, have facilitated child protection efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and promoted the development of an inclusive democratic process in Libya after the 2011 revolution.
She supported a British government campaign on global action against sexual violence in military conflict zones, which made the issue a priority during the 2013 G8 meeting. In May 2012, she launched the Prevention of Sexual Violence Initiative ( PSVI) with the then British Foreign Minister William Hague, who was inspired to campaign on the subject after watching In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a film directed by Angelina Jolie.
PSVI was set up to complement the work of the British government by raising awareness and promoting international cooperation. Jolie spoke on the subject at the G8 Foreign Ministers meeting, where the nations present adopted a historic declaration before the UN Security Council: the G8 Chancellors agreed to make a clamor to increase efforts in search of justice for victims of abuse, including $35.5 million in funding for prevention and response efforts. In June 2014, she co-chaired the International Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest-ever meeting on the subject, which resulted in a protocol approved by 151 nations.
Through her work at PSVI, Jolie met Arminka Helic, Hague’s then special adviser. They founded the Jolie Pitt Dalton Helic in 2015, dedicated to women’s rights and international justice, among other causes. In May of the following year, she debuted as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, sharing her experience in the field of combating sexual violence with graduate students on the Women, Peace and Security course.
In February 2017, the actress criticized, in an opinion article published by The New York Times, the executive order signed by President Donald Trump that suspends the Refugee Admissions Program to the United States (USRAP, in its acronym in English) for 120 days, as well as the entry of people from Libya, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
“Americans shed blood to defend the idea that human rights transcend culture, geography, ethnicity and religion. The decision to suspend refugee resettlement in the United States and deny entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries was met with shock by our friends around the world precisely because of this decree. The global refugee crisis and the threat of terrorism make it entirely justifiable for us to consider how best to protect our borders… Every government must balance the needs of its cities with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured on the basis of facts and not in response to fear”.
Recognition and honors
Angelina Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In August 2002, she received the Church World Service’s Inaugural Humanitarian Award from the Immigration and Refugee Program, and in October of the following year, she was the first person to receive the Citizen of the World Award from the United Nations Correspondents Association. She was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by UNA-USA in October 2005 and received the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee in November 2007. In October 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, awarded her with a gold pin — reserved for senior members — in recognition of having been a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador for over a decade.
On November 2013, Jolie was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Academy Award, by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In June 2014, she was appointed an Honorary Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) for her services to UK foreign policy and the campaign to end sexual violence in war zones. In a private ceremony in October of the same year, the actress was made an Honorary Dame by Queen Elizabeth II and received an insignia at Buckingham Palace for her humanitarian work.
Due to her humanitarian efforts, she has been compared to Audrey Hepburn; about this, she stated: “I feel lucky and privileged to be able to be involved in this. And I’m sure [that] Audrey does too. […] She has been able to help millions of children around the world. There are refugees in need of help for a long time. And, I’m sure, you know, my children will visit and learn from refugees in the future”.
Personal life of Angelina Jolie
Relationships and marriages
Jolie started a serious relationship at the age of fourteen, which lasted two years. Her mother allowed her to live with her boyfriend in their home, about which she later stated: “Either I would be reckless in the streets with my boyfriend or he would be with me in my room, with my mother in the next room. She did a choice, and because of that, I continued to go to school every morning and explore my first relationship in a safe way.” She compared the relationship to marriage in its emotional intensity and said the separation forced her to dedicate herself to her acting career at the age of sixteen.
During the filming of Hackers (1995), she began a romance with British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her first boyfriend since the relationship in her teens. They did not keep in touch for many months after production ended, but they reunited and were married in March 1996. She attended her wedding in black rubber pants and a white T-shirt, over which she had written the groom’s name with her own blood. Although the marriage ended the following year, Jolie remained on good terms with Miller, whom she called “a solid man and friend”. Her divorce, which she initiated in February 1999, was finalized shortly before she remarried the following year.
Shortly before meeting and marrying Miller, Jolie had a romantic relationship with model Jenny Shimizu, during the recording of Foxfire (1996). She later said, “I probably would have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her.” According to Shimizu, the relationship lasted several years and continued even while Jolie was romantically involved with other people.
“Of course, if I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, and felt it okay to want to kiss her and touch her. If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!
Jolie when talking about her bisexuality.
After dating for two months with actor Billy Bob Thornton, they got married in Las Vegas, on May 5, 2000. They met on the recordings of Pushing Tin (1999) but did not pursue a relationship at that time, as Thornton was involved with actress Laura Dern, while Jolie would have dated actor Timothy Hutton, her co-star in Playing God (1997). As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love — most famously, both wearing vials of each other’s blood around their necks — their marriage became a favorite topic of entertainment media.
Angelina Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption of a child from Cambodia in March 2002, but suddenly split three months later; their divorce was finalized on May 27, 2003. When asked about the sudden end of their marriage, she stated, “It took me by surprise too, because overnight we totally changed. And it’s scary, but… I think it can happen when you get involved [with someone] and you don’t know yourself yet”.
Jolie was embroiled in a scandal that attracted widespread press attention when she was accused of causing the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston in 2005. She had fallen in love with Pitt while filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), but denied accusations of an affair, saying, “Being intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I can forgive, I couldn’t look at myself in the morning if I did that, I would not be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife”. Jolie and Pitt did not publicly comment on their relationship until January 2006, when she confirmed that she was pregnant with him.
During their twelve-year relationship, “Brangelina” — a media-created synonymization — was the subject of worldwide media coverage. After the initial scandal subsided, they became one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples. Their family grew to six children, three of whom were adopted, before announcing their engagement in April 2012. They were married on August 23, 2014, at their Château Miraval estate in Correns, France. She subsequently took on the surname Jolie Pitt. After two years of marriage, the couple split in September 2016, declaring irreconcilable differences; in her divorce filing, Jolie asked for custody of her children.
Children of Angelina Jolie
On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia who before the adoption was named Rath Vibol, born August 5, 2001, in a local village. After twice visiting the country, while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and on a UNHCR field mission, she returned in November 2001 with her then-husband, Billy Bob Thornton, where she met Maddox and subsequently ran for up to adopt him.
The adoption process was halted the following month when the US government banned adoptions in Cambodia because of allegations of child trafficking. Although Jolie’s adoption facilitator was later convicted of visa fraud and money laundering, the child’s adoption was deemed legal. After the lawsuit was finalized, she took custody of him in Namibia, where she was filming Beyond Borders (2003). The couple announced the joint adoption, but she adopted Maddox and raised him alone after their separation three months later.
In July 2005, Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl named Zahara Marley from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Zahara formerly Yemsrach, was born on January 8, 2005, in Awasa Ethiopia. Jolie initially believed that Zahara was an orphan with AIDS, as her grandmother had told a testimony, but her mother subsequently denied the testimony and explained that she had abandoned her family when Zahara became ill and said that she considered her ” very happy” to have been adopted by the actress.
When she traveled to Ethiopia in order to take custody of Zahara, she was accompanied by her ex-partner Brad Pitt. She later said that they had made the decision together to adopt in Ethiopia, having visited the country earlier this year. After Jolie announced her intention to adopt her children, she filed a petition to legally change her last name from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on January 19, 2006. So Angelina adopted Maddox and Zahara shortly thereafter.
In order to avoid an inevitable unprecedented media uproar surrounding their relationship, Jolie and Pitt traveled to Namibia for the birth of their first biological daughter. On 27 May 2006, she gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund. The couple sold the first photos of the child through the Getty Images image bank in order to benefit charitable organizations, rather than allowing the paparazzi to take the photographs.
People and Hello! bought the US and UK rights to the images for $4.1 million and $3.5 million respectively, a record in celebrity photojournalism at the time, and all proceeds donated to UNICEF. The girl always appeared in public dressed in men’s clothes and haircuts and never hid her desire to be a boy. A willfully supported by the family. In 2020, it was announced in the press that Shiloh, aged 14, began sex change treatments. However, at the end of 2021, Shiloh let her hair grow and started to wear more feminine clothes, such as dresses.
In March 2007, Jolie adopted a three-year-old son, Pax Thien, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Previously thought of Pham Quang Sang, k boy born on November 29, 2003, had been abandoned by his biological mother shortly after his birth. After visiting the orphanage with Pitt in November 2006, Jolie filed for adoption as a single parent because the country’s adoption regulations do not allow unmarried couples to adopt children. Upon her return to the US, she asked the court to change her son’s last name from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was approved on May 31. Subsequently, Pitt adopted Pax on February 21, 2008.
At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins. During the two weeks, she spent at a seaside hospital in Nice, France, reporters and photographers camped out there during her stay. She gave birth to a boy, Knox Léon, and a boy, Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008. The first pictures of the children were jointly sold to People and Hello! at fourteen million dollars—the most expensive celebrity photographs ever purchased. All profits were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
Cancer Prevention Treatment
On February 16, 2013, aged 37, the actress underwent a preventative double mastectomy after being told she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene. Her maternal family history accounted for the BRCA mutations: her mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, while her grandmother died of ovarian cancer; her aunt, who had the same BRCA1 defect, died of breast cancer three months after Jolie’s operation.
After the mastectomy, which reduced her chances of developing breast cancer to less than five percent, the actress underwent reconstructive surgery that involved implants and allografts. Two years later, in March 2015, following test results that indicated possible signs of early ovarian cancer, she underwent a preventative oophorectomy as she had a 50% risk of developing cancer due to the same genetic anomaly. Despite hormone replacement therapy, the surgery brought her premature menopause.
“I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who are unaware that they may be living in the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene testing, and will also know that they have strong choices”.
Jolie when talking about her mastectomy.
After completing the operations, she discussed the procedures in op-eds for The New York Times, aimed at helping other women make informed health choices. She detailed her diagnosis, surgeries and personal experiences, and described her decision to undergo preventative surgery as a proactive measure for the sake of her six children. She further wrote: “On a personal note, I do not feel less of a woman. I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.”
Her announcement about her mastectomy attracted press attention, as well as new discussions about BRCA mutations and genetic testing. Her decision was met with praise from several public figures, while health advocates supported her raising awareness of the options available to women at risk. Dubbed The Angelina Effect in Time’s cover story, Jolie’s influence has led to a “global and lasting” increase in BRCA genetic testing: testing has doubled in Australia and the UK, parts of Canada and India, as well as they have increased significantly in other European countries and in the United States. Researchers in Canada and the UK found that despite the huge increase [in testing], the percentage of mutation carriers remained the same, meaning that Jolie’s message had only reached those most at risk.
In the media
The public image of Angelina Jolie
As the daughter of actor Jon Voight, Jolie was featured in the media at an early age. After starting her own career, she gained a reputation as a “wild child”, and this contributed to her early success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The media frequently reported on her fascination with blood and knives, drug experiments and her sex life, particularly his bisexuality and interest in sadomasochism. In 2000, when asked about her frankness, she stated: “I say things that other people can get through, that’s what artists are supposed to do — vent and not be perfect and not have answers to anything, and see if people understand”.
Another factor contributing to her controversial image was tabloid rumors of incest that started when, upon winning her Oscar, she kissed her brother on the lips and said, “I’m so in love with my brother right now”. She hit back at the rumors, stating, “It was disappointing that something so beautiful and pure could be turned into a circus”, and explained that, as children of divorce, she and James trust each other.
Jolie’s reputation began to change positively after, aged 26, she became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; about this, she commented: “In my twenties, I was fighting with myself. Now, I fight for something important”. Due to her extensive activism, her Q Score more than doubled between 2000 and 2006. Her popularity steadily grew; in 2006, it was familiar to 81% of Americans, compared to 31% in 2000; in 2020, that number jumped to 96%.
She became notable for her ability to positively influence her public image through her accomplishments, without employing a publicist. Her Q Score remained above average even when, in 2005, she was accused of breaking up Brad Pitt’s marriage to Jennifer Aniston, at which point her public persona became an unlikely combination of the alleged lover, mother, sex symbol and humanitarian. A decade later, she was considered the most admired woman in the world in global polls conducted by YouGov in 2015, 2016 and 2018 and ranked second in 2019. In 2014, YouGov published that the actress was named the most influential famous person in the world. refers to political issues.
Jolie’s overall influence and wealth are widely reported. In a 2006 global survey conducted by ACNielsen in 42 international markets, the actress, along with Pitt, was considered the favorite celebrity to endorse brands and products around the world. She was the face of St. John and Shiseido from 2006 to 2008, and in 2011 she had a deal with Louis Vuitton worth ten million dollars — a record for a single advertising campaign. Jolie was on the Time 100, the list of the most influential people in the world, published by Time magazine, in 2006 and 2008.
She was named the most powerful celebrity in the world in the 2009 edition of Forbes, and was listed as the most powerful actress from 2006 to 2008 and from 2011 to 2013. The magazine also cited her as the highest-paid actress in Hollywood in 2009, 2011 and 2013, with annual earnings estimated at $27 million, thirty million and $33 million respectively.
Appearance
Angelina Jolie’s public image is strongly linked to her beauty and her sex appeal. Many media outlets, including Vogue, People and Vanity Fair, ranked her as the most beautiful woman in the world, while others like Esquire, FHM and Empire named her the sexiest woman alive. Both titles have often been based on public polls in which Jolie has been far ahead of other celebrities. Her best-known physical features are her tattoos, her eyes, and in particular her full lips; the New York Times deemed her chin Kirk Douglas and eyes Bette Davis. Among her twenty or so tattoos are the Latin proverb quod “me nutrit me destruit”, the Tennessee Williams quote “A prayer to the wild at heart kept in cages,” four Sanskrit Buddhist prayers of protection, a twelve-inch tiger, and geographic coordinates indicating the places where she met her adopted children.
Over time, she has covered up or had laser surgery done on several of her tattoos, including “Billy Bob”, the name of her second husband. Photo of her with blood dripping from her mouth, served as inspiration for the posters of the film Jennifer’s Body and the series True Blood. The photograph was taken in 2003 by Martin Schoeller and is part of his close-up collection. On November 2016, the image was offered for sale for sixty thousand dollars.
In the publication of the One Hundred Most Sensual Women in the world, carried out by FHM, Jolie ranked 61st in 2001, 32nd in 2003, ninth in 2004, third in 2005, fourth in 2006, eighth in 2007, ninth in 2008, 14th in 2009, 72nd in 2010, 90th in 2011, 31st in 2012, and 72nd in 2015. In 2011, Men’s Health ranked her 10th on a list of 100 Most Attractive Women of All times.
She also appeared on Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 list at number 43 in 2003, seventeen in 2004, seven in 2005, four in 2006, twelve in 2007, 26 in 2009, 38 in 2010. She was considered one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People magazine in 1998, 2004 and 2005, and was chosen number one among the hundred people of the magazine’s publication of the same content in 2006; she was included in the 2007, 2008 and 2009 editions, and was also ranked as one of the 25 most intriguing people in 2010, 2013 and 2014. The actress occupied second place on the Hot 100 list of the LGBT online portal AfterEllen.com in 2007. Repeated her appearance in the following years, having been voted eleventh on the list in 2008, ninth in 2009 and thirteenth in 2010.
Empire magazine ranked her number two on the list of “100 Sexiest Movie Stars Ever” held in 2004, she was again included in the publication in 2007, having been voted number one, and in the 2013 edition, she was positioned at number nine. Esquire published a publication in 2007 with the same title, and the actress also topped the list. In 2000, she was named by USA Today as number one in the publication’s One Hundred People of the Year, number thirty-three in 2001, sixty-one in 2002, sixty-eight in 2003, and number three in 2005.
Professionally, the actress’s status as a sex symbol was considered both an asset and an obstacle. Some of her most commercially successful films, including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Beowulf (2007), openly relied, at least in part, on her sex appeal, with Empire stating that her “curvy figure,” “eyes attractive” and “lips” contributed greatly to its appeal to movie audiences. On the other hand, writer Allen Barra of Salon agreed with critics who suggested that Jolie’s “dark, intense sexuality” limited her in terms of the types of roles she could play, whereas Clint Eastwood, who directed Changeling (2008), opined that “having the prettiest face on the planet” sometimes detracted from her dramatic credibility with audiences.
In addition to her career, Jolie’s appearance is credited with influencing popular culture at large. In 2002, Sarah Warn, founder of AfterEllen, noted that many women of different sexual orientations publicly expressed feelings of attraction to Jolie, which Warn called “a new development in American culture,” adding that “there are many beautiful women in Hollywood and few generate the same kind of colossal interest in [different] genders and sexual orientations as she does”. Jolie’s physical attributes have become highly sought after among Western women seeking cosmetic surgery.
In 2007, she was considered “the gold standard of beauty”, her full lips being the actress’s most imitated feature in the 2010s. Superdrug named her “the beauty icon of the 2000s”; Steve Jebson, commercial director of Superdrug, said: “Angelina Jolie is not a conventional beauty, but her strong character shines through her fabulous features to give her a unique position in the world of beauty.” After a 2011 survey by Allure, it was found that she more than represented the American beauty ideal, compared to model Christie Brinkley in 1991, having “branched beyond the Barbie doll ideal and embraced something very different”. In 2013, Time’s Jeffrey Kluger agreed that Jolie has for many years symbolized the feminine ideal and opined that her candid discussion of her double mastectomy redefined her beauty.
Filmography
Throughout her career, Jolie has participated in several films and telefilms, receiving praise from critics for her performances mainly in George Wallace (1997), Gia (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), which earned her the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, A Mighty Heart (2007), Wanted and Changeling (both 2008), this earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and Maleficent (2014). Her most lucrative films are: Maleficent, Kung Fu Panda trilogy, Mr. Mrs. Smith (2005), Shark Tale (2004), Wanted, Salt and The Tourist (both 2010), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000).
Awards and nominations of Angelina Jolie
Throughout her career, Angelina Jolie has won and been nominated for several awards, notably her Nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Dramatic Film for two consecutive years (2007 and 2008), Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical and Best Foreign Language Film (as a Producer), four BAFTA, Emmy for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Telemovie and Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Telemovie and the Screen Actors Guild for Best Lead Actress in a Film in 2008 and 2009. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2000, the Golden Globe for three consecutive years (1998, 1999 and 2000), two Screen Actors Guild in 1999 and 2000.
As a humanitarian, she won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2013 and other awards, including the Order of St. Michael and St. George and the United Nations Correspondents Association. By 2017, Jolie had already been nominated for 97 different awards, winning 49 of these.
References (sources)
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