Angelina Jolie Early life and family

Born in Los Angeles, California, Angelina Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of actor James Haven, niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor, and the goddaughter of actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of Slovak and German descent, and on her mother's side she is French Canadian and is said to be of Iroquois ancestry. However, Voight has claimed Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois", and they merely said it to enhance her exotic background.
Angelina Jolie
After her parents' separation in 1976, Angelina Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York. As a child, Angelina Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father. When she was eleven years old, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Angelina Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions.
Angelina Jolie
At the age of 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director. During this period, she wore black clothing, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother's home. She returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school, though in recent times she has referred to this period with the observation, "I am still at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos".

International success: 2001–present
Angelina Jolie
Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Angelina Jolie's films to date had often not appealed to a wide audience, but Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider videogame, Angelina Jolie was required to learn a British accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara Croft. She was generally praised for her physical performance, but the movie generated mostly negative reviews. Slant Magazine commented, "Angelina Jolie was born to play Lara Croft but [director] Simon West makes her journey into a game of Frogger." The movie was an international success nonetheless, earning $275 million worldwide, and launched her global reputation as a female action star.
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie then starred opposite Antonio Banderas as the mail-order bride Julia Russell in Original Sin (2001), a thriller based on the novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich. The film was a major critical failure, with The New York Times noting, "The story plunges more precipitously than Ms. Jolie's neckline." In 2002, she played Lanie Kerrigan in Life or Something Like It, a film about an ambitious TV reporter who is told that she will die in a week. The film was poorly received by critics, though Jolie's performance received positive reviews. CNN's Paul Clinton wrote, "Angelina Jolie is excellent in her role. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the middle of the film, this Academy Award–winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life."

Angelina Jolie Personal life
On March 28, 1996, Angelina Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her co-star in the film Hackers (1995). She attended her wedding in black rubber pants and a white shirt, upon which she had written the groom's name in her blood. Jolie and Miller separated the following year and subsequently divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms and Angelina 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."

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Angelina Jolie Career

Angelina Jolie
Early work: 1993–1997
Angelina Jolie began working as a fashion model when she was 14 years old, modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. During that time she appeared in several music videos, namely Lenny Kravitz' "Stand by My Woman" (1991), Antonello Venditti's "Alta Marea" (1991), Jeff Healey's "Lost in Your Eyes" (1992), The Lemonheads' "It's About Time"(1993), and Meat Loaf's "Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through" (1993). At the age of 16, Angelina Jolie returned to theatre and played her first role as a German dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, as she noticed his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both "drama queens".

Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31% of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them; by 2006 she was familiar to 81% of Americans. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets, Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2006 and 2008. She was described as the world's most beautiful woman in the 2006 "100 Most Beautiful" issue of People, voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols in 2007, and named "Most beautiful woman in the world" by Vanity Fair in 2009. The Hollywood Reporter named Jolie the highest-paid actress of 2008, earning $15 million per film. She also topped Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list in 2009; she had previously been ranked No. 14 in 2007, and No. 3 in 2008. Jolie was named one of the 50 People Who Matter 2010 by New Statesman Magazine.
Angelina Jolie Biography