Angelina JolieneeVoightPreviously,Jolie Pitt, born June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accoladesAcademy AwardThreeGolden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood’s highest-paid actress multiple times.
Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin’ to Get Out (1982), and 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 cable films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. Her 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 action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010), and The Tourist (2010), and received critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), the latter of which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Her biggest commercial success came with the fantasy picture Maleficent (2014). Her voice work in animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008)-present is another highlight. Jolie is also the director and writer of several war dramas including Unbroken (2014) and In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011).
In addition to her film career, Jolie is known for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and made an honorary Dame Commander 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). Jolie has undertaken over a dozen field missions globally to refugee camps and war zones; her visited countries include Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
As a public figure, Jolie has been cited as one of the most Influential and powerful people in American entertainment. She has been cited as the world’s most beautiful woman by various media outlets. Her personal life, including her relationships, marriages, and health, has been the subject of wide publicity. She is divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie has been legally separated from Brad Pitt, an actor with whom she has six kids. Three of them were adopted internationally.
Jolie’s career prospects began to improve after she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in TNT’s George Wallace (1997), about the life of the segregationist Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, played by Gary Sinise. Jolie played Wallace’s second wife Cornelia. This performance was praised by Lee Winfrey from The Philadelphia Inquirer as a highlight. George Wallace was very well received by critics and won, among other awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film. Jolie also received a nomination for an Emmy Award for her performance.
Jolie made her first big break in 1998 when she played supermodel Gia Carangi on HBO’s Gia (1998). The film chronicles the destruction of Carangi’s life and career as a result of her addiction to heroin, and her decline and death from AIDS In the mid-1980s. Vanessa Vance of Reel.com retrospectively noted, “Jolie was widely recognized for her role in the title Gia’s role, and it is easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal of the role. Nerve, charm, and despair–these are her roles in the film. Perhaps the most stunning train wreck ever recorded.” Jolie was nominated to an Emmy Award and won a Golden Globe Award for the second year in a row. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award.
In accordance with Lee Strasberg’s method acting, Jolie preferred to remain in character between scenes in many of her films. her early films, and as a result had gained a reputation for being difficult to deal with. While shooting Gia, she told her husband, Jonny Lee Miller, that she would not be able to phone him: “I’d tell him: ‘I’m alone; I’m dying; I’m gay; I’m not going to see you for weeks.'” After Gia wrapped, she briefly gave up acting, because she felt that she had “nothing else to give.” She separated from Miller and moved to New York, where she took night classes at New York University to study directing and screenwriting. Jolie returned to her career after being encouraged by George Wallace’s Golden Globe Award win and the positive reception from Gia.
Following the previously filmed gangster film Hell’s Kitchen (1998), Jolie returned to the screen in Playing by Heart (1998), part of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, and Ryan Phillippe. The film received predominantly positive reviews, and Jolie was praised in particular; San Francisco Chronicle critic Peter Stack wrote, “Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what She’s open to gambling. She won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review.
In 1999, Jolie starred in the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. It received mixed reviews from critics and Jolie was not pleased with the film. character–Thornton’s seductive wife–was particularly criticized; writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe dismissed her as “a completely ludicrous writer’s creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die wears lots Russell is lonely and wears only turquoise rings. Nights away from home. “Jolie starred in The Bone Collector (1999) as a cop who helps Washington’s quadriplegic detective find a serial killer. Although the film was critically acclaimed, it grossed only $151.5 million in worldwide box office. Terry Lawson, of the Detroit Free Press, concluded that “Jolie”, while beautiful to look at, was simply and woefully miscast.
“Jolie is emerging as one of the great wild spirits of current movies, a loose cannon who somehow has deadly aim.”
–Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert on Jolie’s performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Jolie next took the supporting role of a sociopathic mental patient in Girl, Interrupted (1999), an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same name. Winona Ryder played the main character in what was hoped to be a comeback for her, Instead, the film marked Jolie’s last breakthrough in Hollywood. Jolie won her third Golden Globe Award and her second Screen Actors Guild Award. She also received an Academy Award in 2000 for Best Supporting Actress. For Variety, Emanuel Levy noted, “Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in.