OLIVIA: Hello, Little Fox readers, and welcome back to People in the News. Today Ben will be telling us about actress Angelina Jolie. She’s a movie star who’s often considered one of the world’s most beautiful people. But she’s more than just a pretty face. Right, Ben?
BEN: That’s right, Olivia. Angelina has acted in over 45 movies, but she’s also a humanitarian. She’s especially concerned about refugees. Those are people who’ve had to flee their own countries because of war or persecution. Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California. Both her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, and her father, Jon Voight, were actors. Angelina had an older brother, and Marcheline gave up her career to take care of both children. But Jon left the family when Angelina was about a year old. Since then, Angelina and her father have had an off-and-on relationship.
Like many little girls, Angelina loved to dress up and pretend she was onstage. But she was different from other kids too. She had snakes as pets! And she wanted to be a funeral director—not a movie director—when she grew up! Still, she showed some early interest in acting. She was only six years old when she played a small role in one of her father’s movies.
Angelina lived in a New York City suburb until she was 11. Then her family moved back to the Los Angeles area. Angelina had a difficult time in school. Her classmates made fun of her clothes, full lips, glasses, and braces. As a result, Angelina grew closer to her mother, whom she credits with inspiring her acting career. She also began to take classes at a famous theater and film institute.
But her early teenage years continued to be hard. Angelina dyed her hair purple and dressed like a punk. She experimented with drugs and started cutting herself. She even dropped out of high school for a while. When she returned to school, she managed to graduate early, at age 16. Most students in the United States graduate at age 17 or 18.
By now Angelina was a very pretty girl. She began to model and appear in music videos. She also dropped her father’s name, Voight, and became just Angelina Jolie. She soon started acting in movies.
OLIVIA: Was she an instant success?
BEN: No, but she did meet her first husband, actor Jonny Lee Miller, while working on the film Hackers. She was almost 21 when they married in 1996.
Angelina’s first major acting award was for George Wallace, a TV movie. In 1999 she played a mental-hospital patient in the movie Girl, Interrupted. She won multiple awards for that performance, including an Academy Award for best supporting actress.
By now her first marriage was breaking up. Angelina moved to New York, and took some classes in filmmaking at New York University. In 2000 she married actor Billy Bob Thornton. Around this time Angelina also began filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Based on a popular video game, the movie attracted a large audience. It also marked a major turning point in Angelina’s life. The film was made in Cambodia, and land mines limited where the actors could walk.
OLIVIA: What are land mines?
BEN: They’re buried explosives, which blow up when someone steps on them. They can remain buried and dangerous for years. The mines were planted in Cambodia during conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s. Angelina was horrified that Cambodians lived in constant fear of being killed or injured. She contacted the United Nations to see if there was anything she could do. While reading about land mines, she was impressed by the UN’s work with refugees around the world. Angelina was determined to help!
In 2001 she visited Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Pakistan on behalf of the UN Refugee Agency. These were the first of more than fifty overseas trips as the agency’s special ambassador. Angelina knew that she could use her celebrity to draw other people’s attention to land mines and refugees. Although these trips were often difficult and dangerous, Angelina never asked for special treatment. She lived and worked in the same conditions as the UN workers. In addition to helping distribute food and supplies to refugees, she donated millions of dollars of her own money to help them. She also adopted a Cambodian boy, and a girl from Ethiopia.
Angelina continued to make movies—writing and directing them too—so that she could do more for her favorite causes. She divided her income equally among her expenses, savings, and donations.
OLIVIA: Tell us more about her personal life. What’s Brangelina?
BEN: That’s a combination of the names Brad and Angelina. Her third husband is actor Brad Pitt. The media has been very interested in "Brangelina" from the moment Brad and Angelina met. That was on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
With Brad, Angelina continued to expand her family. Together the couple adopted a Vietnamese boy. Then Angelina gave birth to a daughter, and later twins—so they’ve got a big family, with six kids!
In 2013 Angelina had to make a difficult decision. Her mother, grandmother, and aunt had all died of cancer. From a blood test, Angelina had learned she carried a gene that increased her own chances for developing breast and ovarian cancer. So she decided to have surgery as a way to prevent getting these diseases. After describing her surgery in the New York Times, Angelina won widespread praise for her courage. She said she’d made the choice so that she could be around for her children. She urged other women to take charge of their health, too, by seeking out information and expert opinions.
OLIVIA: Wow, Ben. Angelina has grown from teenage rebel to movie star to humanitarian and health advocate. Maybe one day somebody will make her life story into a movie!
That’s all for now, Little Fox readers.