Angelina Jolie Pitt (Born: June 4, 1975 ) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and has been cited as Hollywood's highest-paid actress. Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin' to Get Out (1982). Her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in a major film, Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical television 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's starring role as the video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a leading Hollywood actress. She continued her successful action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), and Salt (2010), and received critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Beginning in the 2010s, she expanded her career into directing, screenwriting, and producing, starting with the wartime dramas In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) and Unbroken (2014). Her biggest commercial success came with the fantasy picture Maleficent (2014).
In addition to her film career, Jolie is noted for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and an honorary damehood of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG), among other honors. She promotes various causes, including conservation, education, and women's rights, and is most noted for her advocacy on behalf of refugees as a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). As a public figure, Jolie has been cited as one of the most influential and powerful people in the American entertainment industry, as well as the world's most beautiful woman, by various media outlets. Her personal life is the subject of wide publicity. Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, she has been married to actor Brad Pitt since 2014. They have six children together, three of whom were adopted internationally.
2001–04: International success
Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Jolie had rarely found films that appealed to a wide audience, but Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider videogames, the film required her to learn an English accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft. Although the film generated mostly negative reviews, Jolie was generally praised for her physical performance; Newsday 's John Anderson commented, "Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coolth. The film was an international hit, earning $274.7 million worldwide,[38] and launched her global reputation as a female action star.
2005–10
In 2005, Jolie finally returned to major box office success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which she starred opposite Brad Pitt as a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. The film received mixed reviews, but was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads; Star Tribune critic Colin Covert noted, "While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry."[52] With box office takings of $478.2 million worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the seventh-highest grossing picture of the year and remained Jolie's highest-grossing live-action film for the next decade.
2011–present: Professional expansion
After directing the documentary A Place in Time (2007), which was distributed through the National Education Association,[69] Jolie made her feature directorial debut with 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. She conceived the film to rekindle attention for the survivors, after twice visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina in her role as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.[70] To ensure authenticity, she cast only actors from the former Yugoslavia—including stars Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović—and incorporated their wartime experiences into her screenplay.[71] Upon release, the film received mixed reviews; Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen."[72] 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.[73]
UNHCR ambassadorship
"We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us."
—Jolie on her motives for joining UNHCR in 2001[90]
Jolie first witnessed the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world.[91] Upon her return home, she contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots.[90] To learn more about the conditions in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.[90]
In the following months, 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,[92][93] the largest donation UNHCR had ever received from a private individual.[94] She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits.[90] Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on August 27, 2001.[95]
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jolie at a UNHCR celebration of World Refugee Day in June 2005
Over the next decade, she went on more than 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries.[96] In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon."[92] To that end, her 2001-02 field visits were chronicled in her book Notes from My Travels, which was published in October 2003 in conjunction with the release of her humanitarian drama Beyond Borders.
Jolie aimed to visit what she termed "forgotten emergencies," crises that media attention had shifted away from.[97] She became noted for travelling to war zones,[98] such as Sudan's Darfur region during the Darfur conflict,[99] the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War,[100] where she met privately with U.S. troops and other multi-national forces,[101] and the Afghan capital Kabul during the war in Afghanistan, where three aid workers were murdered in the midst of her first visit.[98] To aid her travels, she began taking flying lessons in 2004 with the aim of ferrying aid workers and food supplies around the world;[15][102] she now holds a private pilot license with instrument rating and owns a Cirrus SR22 and Cessna 208 Caravan single-engine aircraft.[103][104][105]
On April 17, 2012, after more than a decade of service as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie was promoted to the rank of Special Envoy to High Commissioner António Guterres, the first to take on such a position within the organization. In her expanded role, she was given authority to represent Guterres and UNHCR at the diplomatic level, with a focus on major refugee crises.[106] In the months following her promotion, she made her first visit as Special Envoy—her third over all—to Ecuador, where she met with Colombian refugees,[107] and she accompanied Guterres on a week-long tour of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, to assess the situation of refugees from neighboring Syria.[108] Since then, Jolie has gone on a dozen field missions around the world to meet with refugees and undertake advocacy on their behalf.[96][109]
Conservation and community development
Jolie at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in January 2005
In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born son with his heritage, Jolie purchased a house in his country of birth in 2003. The traditional home sat on 39 hectares in the northwestern province Battambang, adjacent to Samlout national park in the Cardamom mountains, which had become infiltrated with poachers who threatened endangered species. She purchased the park's 60,000 hectares and turned the area into a wildlife reserve named for her son, the Maddox Jolie Project.[110] In recognition of her conservation efforts, King Norodom Sihamoni awarded her Cambodian citizenship on July 31, 2005.[111]
In November 2006, Jolie expanded the scope of the project—renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP)—to create Asia's first Millennium Village, in accordance with UN development goals.[112] She was inspired by a meeting with the founder of Millennium Promise, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, at the World Economic Forum in Davos,[110] where she was an invited speaker in 2005 and 2006. Together they filmed a 2005 MTV special, The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, which followed them on a trip to a Millennium Village in western Kenya. By mid-2007, some 6,000 villagers and 72 employees—some of them former poachers employed as rangers—lived and worked at MJP, in ten villages previously isolated from one another. The compound includes schools, roads, and a soy milk factory, all funded by Jolie. Her home functions as the MJP field headquarters.[110]
After filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia, Jolie became patron of the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, a wildlife orphanage and medical center in the Kalahari desert. She first visited the Harnas farm during production of the film, which features vultures rescued by the foundation.[113] In December 2010, Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, established the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support conservation work by the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature reserve also located in the Kalahari.[114] In name of their Namibian-born daughter, they have funded large-animal conservation projects as well as a free health clinic, housing, and a school for the San Bushmen community at Naankuse.[115][116][117] Jolie and Pitt support other causes through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, established in September 2006.[118]
Child immigration and education
Jolie has pushed for legislation to aid child immigrants and other vulnerable children in both the U.S. and developing nations, including the "Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2005."[95][119] She began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital from 2003 onwards, explaining, "As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that's the way to move the ball."[95] Since October 2008, she has co-chaired Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a network of leading U.S. law firms that provide free legal aid to unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings across the U.S.[120] Founded in a collaboration between Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation, by 2013, KIND had become the principal provider of pro bono lawyers for immigrant children.[121] Jolie had previously, from 2005 to 2007, funded the launch of a similar initiative, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants' National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children.[119][122]
Jolie has also advocated for children's education. Since its founding at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting in September 2007, she has co-chaired the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which provides policy and funding to education programs for children in conflict-affected regions.[123] In its first year, the partnership supported education projects for Iraqi refugee children, youth affected by the Darfur conflict, and girls in rural Afghanistan, among other affected groups.[123] The partnership has worked closely with the Council on Foreign Relations' Center for Universal Education—founded by the partnership's co-chair, noted economist Gene Sperling—to establish education policies, which resulted in recommendations made to UN agencies, G8 development agencies, and the World Bank.[124] Since April 2013, all proceeds from Jolie's high-end jewelry collection, Style of Jolie, have benefited the partnership's work.[125]
Jolie has funded a school and boarding facility for girls at Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya,[126] which opened in 2005,[127] and two primary schools for girls in the returnee settlements Tangi and Qalai Gudar in eastern Afghanistan, which opened in March 2010 and November 2012 respectively.[128][129] In addition to the facilities at the Millennium Village she established in Cambodia, Jolie had built at least ten other schools in the country by 2005.[130] In February 2006, she opened the Maddox Chivan Children's Center, a medical and educational facility for children affected by HIV, in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.[112] In Sebeta, Ethiopia, the birthplace of her eldest daughter, she funds a sister facility, the Zahara Children's Center, which is expected to open in 2015 and will treat and educate children suffering from HIV or tuberculosis. Both centers are run by the Global Health Committee.[131]
Human rights and women's rights
British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Jolie at the launch of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in May 2012
After Jolie joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June 2007,[132] she hosted a symposium on international law and justice at CFR headquarters and funded several CFR special reports, including "Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities."[109][120] In January 2011, she established the Jolie Legal Fellowship,[133] a network of lawyers and attorneys who are sponsored to advocate the development of human rights in their countries.[134] Its member attorneys, called Jolie Legal Fellows, have facilitated child protection efforts in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and promoted the development of an inclusive democratic process in Libya following the 2011 revolution.[133][134][135]
Jolie has fronted a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones by the UK government, which made the issue a priority of its 2013 G8 presidency. In May 2012, she launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) with Foreign Secretary William Hague,[136] who was inspired to campaign on the issue by her Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011).[137] PSVI was established to complement wider UK government work by raising awareness and promoting international co-operation.[136] Jolie spoke on the subject at the G8 foreign ministers meeting,[138] where the attending nations adopted a historic declaration,[136] and before the UN security council, which responded by adopting its broadest resolution on the issue to date.[139] In June 2014, she co-chaired the four-day Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest-ever meeting on the subject, attended by 123 nations.[140] It resulted in a protocol endorsed by 151 countries.[141]
In February 2015, Jolie and Hague launched the UK's first academic Centre on Women, Peace and Security, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Centre aims to contribute to global women's rights issues, including the prosecution of war rape and women's engagement in politics, through academic research, a post-graduate teaching program, public engagement, and collaboration with international organizations.[141][142]
Recognition and honors
Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In August 2002, she received the inaugural Humanitarian Award from the Church World Service's Immigration and Refugee Program,[143] and in October 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association.[144] She was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA in October 2005,[145] and she received the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee in November 2007.[146] In October 2011, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres presented Jolie with a gold pin reserved for the most long-serving staff, in recognition of her decade as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.[147]
In November 2013, Jolie received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Academy Award, from the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[148][149] In June 2014, she was appointed an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) for her services to the UK's foreign policy and campaigning to end sexual violence in war zones.[150][151] Queen Elizabeth II presented Jolie with the insignia of her honorary damehood during a private ceremony the following October.[152]
Personal life
Relationships and marriages
Jolie had a serious boyfriend for two years from the age of 14. Her mother allowed them to live together in her home, of which Jolie later said, "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. She made the choice, and because of it, I continued to go to school every morning and explored my first relationship in a safe way."[153] She has compared the relationship to a marriage in its emotional intensity, and said that the breakup compelled her to dedicate herself to her acting career at the age of 16.[154]
During filming of Hackers (1995), Jolie had a romance with British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her first lover since the relationship in her early teens.[10] They were not in touch for many months after production ended, but eventually reconnected and married soon after on March 28, 1996. She attended her wedding in black rubber pants and a white T-shirt, upon which she had written the groom's name in her blood.[155] Jolie and Miller separated in September 1997 and divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms, and Jolie later explained, "It comes down to timing. I think he's the greatest husband a girl could ask for. I'll always love him, we were simply too young."[156]
Jolie began a relationship with model-actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of Foxfire (1996). She later said, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her."[157] According to Shimizu, their relationship lasted many years and continued even while Jolie was romantically involved with other people, though it had ended by 2005.[158] In 2003, when asked if she was bisexual, Jolie responded, "Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!"[159]
Jolie with her partner, Brad Pitt, at the Academy Awards in February 2009, where both were nominated for a leading performance
After a two-month courtship, Jolie married actor Billy Bob Thornton on May 5, 2000, in Las Vegas. They met on the set of Pushing Tin (1999), but did not pursue a relationship at that time as Thornton was engaged to actress Laura Dern, while Jolie was reportedly dating actor Timothy Hutton, her co-star in Playing God (1997).[160] As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love—most famously wearing one another's blood in vials around their necks—their marriage became a favorite topic of the entertainment media.[161] Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption of a child from Cambodia in March 2002, but abruptly separated three months later.[162] Their divorce was finalized on May 27, 2003. When asked about the sudden dissolution of their marriage, Jolie stated, "It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it's scary but... I think it can happen when you get involved and you don't know yourself yet."[15]
In early 2005, Jolie was involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal when she was accused of being the reason for the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. She and Pitt were alleged to have started an affair during filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Jolie stated on several occasions that this was not true, but also said that they "fell in love" on the set;[163] she explained in 2005, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."[159] Jolie and Pitt did not publicly comment on the nature of their relationship until January 2006, when Jolie confirmed that she was pregnant with Pitt's child.[164] They announced their engagement in April 2012, after seven years together,[165] and married on August 23, 2014, at their estate Château Miraval in Correns, France.[166] Jolie took on Pitt's name following their marriage.[167] As a couple, they are dubbed "Brangelina" by the entertainment media, and are the subject of worldwide media coverage.[168]
Children
Jolie's children
[show]
On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child,[169] seven-month-old Maddox Chivan,[22] from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia.[170] He was born as Rath Vibol on August 5, 2001,[171] in a local village.[14] After twice visiting Cambodia, while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and on a UNHCR field mission, Jolie returned in November 2001 with her husband, Billy Bob Thornton, where they met Maddox and subsequently applied to adopt him.[172] The adoption process was halted the following month when the U.S. government banned adoptions from Cambodia amid allegations of child trafficking.[172] Although Jolie's adoption facilitator was later convicted of visa fraud and money laundering, her adoption of Maddox was deemed lawful.[173] Once the process was finalized, she took custody of him in Namibia, where she was filming Beyond Borders (2003).[172] Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption together, but she adopted Maddox alone,[162][174] and raised him as a single parent following their separation three months later.[162][175]
A pregnant Jolie with director Clint Eastwood at the Cannes premiere of Changeling in May 2008
Jolie adopted a daughter, six-month-old Zahara Marley, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 6, 2005.[176][177] Zahara was born as Yemsrach on January 8, 2005, in Awasa.[178][179] Jolie initially believed Zahara to be an AIDS orphan,[180] based on official testimony from her grandmother,[181] but her birth mother later came forward in the media. She explained that she had abandoned her family when Zahara became sick, and said she thought Zahara was "very fortunate" to have been adopted by Jolie.[178] Jolie was accompanied by her partner, Brad Pitt, when she traveled to Ethiopia to take custody of Zahara.[176] She later indicated that they had together made the decision to adopt from Ethiopia,[182] having first visited the country earlier that year.[183] After Pitt announced his intention to adopt her children,[184] she filed a petition to legally change their surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on January 19, 2006.[179] Pitt adopted Maddox and Zahara soon after.[185]
In an attempt to avoid the unprecedented media frenzy surrounding their relationship, Jolie and Pitt traveled to Namibia for the birth of their first biological child.[168] On May 27, 2006, she gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund.[186] They sold the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images with the aim of benefiting charity, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these valuable photographs.[185] People and Hello! purchased the North American and British rights to the images for $4.1 and $3.5 million respectively, a record in celebrity photojournalism at that time,[187] with all proceeds donated to UNICEF.[188]
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a son, three-year-old Pax Thien, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.[189] He was born as Pham Quang Sang on November 29, 2003, in HCMC, where he was abandoned by his biological mother soon after birth.[190] After visiting the orphanage with Pitt in November 2006, Jolie applied for adoption as a single parent, because Vietnam's adoption regulations do not allow unmarried couples to co-adopt.[189] After their return to the U.S., she petitioned the court to change her son's surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was approved on May 31.[191] Pitt subsequently adopted Pax on February 21, 2008.[192]
At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade.[193] She gave birth to a son, Knox Léon, and a daughter, Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008. The first pictures of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for a reported $14 million—the most expensive celebrity photographs ever taken. All proceeds were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.[194]
Cancer prevention treatment
On February 16, 2013, at age 37, Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene.[195] Her maternal family history warranted genetic testing for BRCA mutations: her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, had breast cancer and died from ovarian cancer, while her grandmother died from ovarian cancer.[196][197] Her aunt, who had the same BRCA1 defect, died from breast cancer three months after Jolie's operation.[198] Following the mastectomy, which lowered her chances of developing breast cancer to under 5 percent, Jolie had reconstructive surgery involving implants and allografts.[196] Two years later, in March 2015, after annual test results indicated possible signs of early ovarian cancer, she underwent a preventive oophorectomy, as she had a 50% risk of developing ovarian cancer due to the same genetic anomaly. Despite hormone replacement therapy, the surgery brought on premature menopause.[197]
"I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options."
—Jolie on her reasons for speaking out about her mastectomy[195]
After completing each operation, Jolie discussed her mastectomy and oophorectomy in op-eds published by The New York Times, with the aim of helping other women make informed health choices. She detailed her diagnosis, surgeries, and personal experiences, and described her decision to undergo preventive surgery as a proactive measure for the sake of her six children.[195][197][199] Jolie further wrote, "On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity."[195]
Jolie's announcement of her mastectomy attracted widespread publicity and discussion on BRCA mutations and genetic testing.[200] Her decision was met with praise from various public figures,[201] while health campaigners welcomed her raising awareness of the options available to at-risk women.[202] Dubbed "The Angelina Effect" by a Time cover story,[203] Jolie's influence led to a "global and long-lasting" increase in BRCA gene testing:[204] the number of referrals tripled in Australia and doubled in the UK, parts of Canada, and India,[204][205][206] as well as significantly increased in other European countries and the U.S.[207][208][209] Researchers in Canada and the UK found that despite the large increase, the percentage of mutation carriers remained the same, meaning Jolie's message had reached those most at risk.[204] In her first op-ed, Jolie had advocated wider accessibility of BRCA gene testing and acknowledged the high costs,[210] which were greatly reduced after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a June 2013 ruling, invalidated BRCA gene patents held by Myriad Genetics.
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