Angelina Jolie Bio

Angelina Jolie's Biography

Angelina’s parents separated when she was only a year old, and she and her elder brother were raised by their mother, who moved to Palisades, New York.
When Angelina was eleven years old, her mother returned to Los Angeles. Angelina decided she wanted to become an actress and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. She studied there for two years.

When she was 14, however, she quit acting classes, and became, by her own admission, a “punk kid with tattoos.” She became a fashion model, working in Los Angeles, New York and London. She appeared in music videos, and on stage. Her earnings allowed her to move out, although the apartment she rented was only a few blocks from her mother's home.

Angelina and her brother were always very close. Indeed, she appeared in several films he made while he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts. On the other hand, she and her father have always had a strained relationship, and they do not speak.

Angelina’s professional movie career began when she was 18, in 1993. She had the leading role in the low-budget film Cyborg 2. Shortly thereafter, she began appearing steadily in movies, although it would be some years before she achieved a “breakout role.”

In 1996, she married her first husband, Jonny Lee Miller. They separated after a year, and were divorced in 1999, although they remain on good terms. Angelina says she was too young at the time.

Her break out role is considered to be her 1999 supporting role in the Winona Ryder-starring film Girl, Interrupted. (1999). She won her third Golden Globe Award for this role as well as her second Screen Actors Guild Award and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2000, she married actor Billy Bob Thornton, and they would divorce in 2003.
In 2001, Angelina starred as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. This film made her an international star.

It was while making this movie in Cambodia that Angelina came face to face with grinding poverty for the first time. So struck by it was she that she soon began to visit refugee camps around the world, such as those in Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
Her devotion to humanitarian causes can be traced from this moment – and in late 2001 she was named as an UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. Indeed, since that time she has travelled the world, stopping in at refugee camps in some of the poorest countries in the world, even visiting camps in Iraq. She has donated millions of dollars to the various refugee camps in these countries.
In 2005, Angelina starred in the action-comedy film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which co-starred Brad Pitt. While filming, the two fell in love. Brad Pitt divorced Jennifer Aniston, and the two moved in together and began adopting a multi-national family. Angelina also has three natural born children, daughter Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne.

In 2005, Angelina founded of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal-aid to asylum-seeking children with no legal representation. In 2006, she and Brad Pitt founded the Jolie/Pitt Foundation.

In 2010, she and Brad Pitt donated $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there which destroyed the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Although Angelina has continued to make movies, she averages only one a year, and spends most of her time with her humanitarian activities.

See also: Angelina Jolie Quotes, Activists, Famous celebrities, Famous Americans
Famous Women, Famous Actresses, Famous People Born in June, Famous Geminis
Famous American Women, Famous People Born in the Seventies, Human Rights Activists
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