Angelina Jolie (pronounced, born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), but her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in the cyber-thriller 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 achieved wide fame after her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and she established herself among the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood with the Tomb Raider sequel The Cradle of Life (2003) She reinforced her reputation as a leading action star with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and Wanted (2008), which marked her biggest non-animated commercial successes to date, and she received further 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.
Jolie has been cited as the world's "sexiest" and "most beautiful" woman, titles for which she received substantial media attention.Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, she lives with actor Brad Pitt, with whom she has three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, and three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.
Born in Los Angeles, California, 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 goddaughter of actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent, and on her mother's side, she is of French Canadian, Dutch, and German ancestry. She has also claimed to be part Iroquois through her mother,although Voight has said that Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois."
After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother went to live with their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on raising her children. As a child, 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 six years old, her mother and stepfather, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los Angeles five years later. She 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.
Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), but her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in the cyber-thriller 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 achieved wide fame after her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and she established herself among the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood with the Tomb Raider sequel The Cradle of Life (2003) She reinforced her reputation as a leading action star with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and Wanted (2008), which marked her biggest non-animated commercial successes to date, and she received further 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.
Jolie has been cited as the world's "sexiest" and "most beautiful" woman, titles for which she received substantial media attention.Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, she lives with actor Brad Pitt, with whom she has three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, and three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.
Born in Los Angeles, California, 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 goddaughter of actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent, and on her mother's side, she is of French Canadian, Dutch, and German ancestry. She has also claimed to be part Iroquois through her mother,although Voight has said that Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois."
After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother went to live with their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on raising her children. As a child, 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 six years old, her mother and stepfather, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los Angeles five years later. She 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.