 Birth
Name:
Angelina Jolie Voight
Date
of Birth: June 4th, 1975
Place
of Birth: Los Angeles,
California, USA
Horoscope:
Gemini
Next to Liv Tyler,
Angelina Jolie is the only actress
of her generation who can thank
her famous father for the lips that
have become her trademark. The actress
was born Angelina Jolie Voight to
the pillow-lipped Jon Voight and
actress Marcheline Bertrand on June
4, 1975, in Los Angeles.
Raised mostly by
her mother after her parents divorced
while she was still a baby, Jolie
moved around a lot with her mother
and brother. She also did a fair
amount of traveling as a professional
model, living in such places as
London, New York, and Los Angeles
before settling for a time in New
York as a student at the Lee Strasberg
Theatre Institute and New York University,
where she first started acting in
theater productions. The fledgling
actress soon moved on to film with
a small role in 1993's Cyborg 2,
followed in 1995 by her turn as
a computer hacker in the more widely
seen Hackers. The film gave her
first taste of recognition, as well
as an introduction to Trainspotting's
Jonny Lee Miller, to whom she was
married for a short time.
After appearing
in a number of mediocre films, Jolie
finally hit it big in 1997 with
her Golden Globe-winning performance
as George Wallace's wife in the
highly acclaimed TV movie George
Wallace. The role, coupled with
her Emmy-nominated performance in
the title role of HBO's Gia, provided
Jolie with a new level of professional
respect and recognition. She was
soon appearing on talk shows and
in magazines, answering questions
about everything from her multiple
tattoos to her famous father to
her brief marriage.
She was also netting
roles in high-profile projects:
In 1998 Jolie headlined an ensemble
cast that included Sean Connery,
Gena Rowlands, Anthony Edwards,
Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe,
and Madeline Stowe in Playing by
Heart. The following year, she was
part of another high-voltage cast
in Mike Newell's Pushing Tin, co-starring
alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob
Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Although
the film was neither a critical
nor a financial success, it did
little to diminish the rapid ascent
of the career of the actress, who
was in hot demand for projects that
would further elevate her already
rising star. In 2000, Jolie's star
received one of its greatest boosts
to date when the actress won an
Academy Award for Best Supporting
Actress for her portrayal of a volatile
mental patient in Girl, Interrupted.
Later that year, her personal life
also got a boost in the form of
her April marriage to Billy Bob
Thornton.
Onscreen, Jolie
was hard to miss in 2000. She starred
in a number of films, including
the crime thriller Gone in Sixty
Seconds, in which she co-starred
as a car thief alongside Nicolas
Cage, and Original Sin, a thriller
that featured her as the bad-seed
bride of a Cuban tycoon (Antonio
Banderas). If she was hard to miss
in 2000, Jolie was impossible to
escape in 2001 with her turn as
shapely video-game adventuress Lara
Croft in the long anticipated film
adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider
video-game franchise. Carrying on
the tradition of video-game movies
that are light on plot but heavy
on the action, Tomb Raider (2001)
and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle
of Life (2003) scored with summer
audiences and quickly shot to number
one at the box office despite disparaging
reviews citing an incoherent story
line, unlike Life or Something Like
It, the 2002 romantic comedy-drama
that critics and audiences alike
would rather not have seen.
On July 18th, 2002,
Jolie filed for divorce from Billy
Bob Thornton, claiming that their
priorities no longer meshed after
having adopted a child. Though the
famously quirky couples were no
longer, Angelina's film schedule
remained hectic. In 2003 she would
play a rich-girl-turned-humanitarian
in Beyond Borders, while 2004 promised
a host of parts for Jolie, including
a role in Oliver Stone's Alexander;
an epic biography of Alexander the
Great starring Colin Farrell, as
well as a role alongside fellow
Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow in
The World of Tomorrow, and a turn
as a tough FBI agent in Taking Lives.
~ barnesandnoble.com |
