Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, California. Her father Jon Voight was an established Hollywood actor, who had earned worldwide fame for his performances in 'Midnight Cowboy', 'Deliverance' and 'Coming Home' - the latter winning him an Oscar.

At school, she joined a gang called the Kissy Girls who hunted boys down and kissed them until they begged for mercy - until the school called a halt and the gang broke up! Money was tight while Angelina was growing up, but Marcheline made a point of taking her children to the movies as often as possible. Angelina claims that these family movie outings were what first inspired her to dream of becoming an actress.

At the age of 16, Angelina split up with her boyfriend, and decided to revive her childhood dreams of becoming an actress. She moved into an apartment opposite her mother and secured her first on-stage role as a German S&M dominatrix! For the first time ever, she also began to make the peace with her father.
She realised that when it came to acting he had a great deal to teach her. With her braces and glasses gone, she succeeded in landing work as a model and even appeared in the video for Meat Loaf’s 'Rock’n’Roll Dreams Come Through'. She also appeared in promo videos for Lenny Kravitz and the Rolling Stones.

Jolie's brother James (who now called himself James Haven) had pursued his ambition of going to film school, and Angelina gained her first taste of screen acting by starring in no less than five of her brother's student films. She made her movie debut proper in 1993 in the role of Casella 'Cash' Reese alongside Jack Palance in 'Cyborg 2'. Angelina's role capitalised on her screen charisma and brash, upfront sex appeal, and before long she was offered another plum role in 'Hackers', a sci-fi computer thriller. While on set shooting Hackers, she met British actor Johnny Lee Miller, of 'Trainspotting' fame, who played a computer wizard on the run from the police. Jolie and Miller worked closely together (she played a member of his team) and, before long, the couple were announcing their engagement in the press.

In 1997, she played the role of George Wallace's wife in the biographical movie 'George Wallace', which told the story of the segregationist Governor of Alabama who was shot and paralysed during his campaign to  become President, a performance which achieved considerable critical acclaim. But whilst her career was going from strength to strength, her private life was starting to fall apart. Johnny Lee Miller was finding her emotional excesses harder and harder to deal with, especially while she was playing the lead role in 'Gia', a biopic about the life of Gia Carangi, a lesbian supermodel from the 1970s who eventually died of AIDS.

Next came Jolie's first blockbuster role - 'Tomb Raider'. This was probably her most challenging role to date, for she not only had to learn how to speak with an English, upper-class accent, but also had to master a wide range of physically demanding disciplines, including kick-boxing, street fighting, yoga, ballet, car-racing and dog-sledding.

In 2004, she starred in 'Taking Lives' where she played an intuitive detective, co-starring with Ethan Hawke. Hawke's marriage to Uma Thurman collapsed around the same time and Jolie was blamed - but she denied the rumours, and was later proved right.

Also during 2005, Jolie found time to get involved in Live8 and visited post-earthquake Pakistan. She adopted Zaharah Marley, a little Ethiopian girl as a sister for Maddox and, to her delight, Brad Pitt decided to adopt both children as his own. And in May 2006, Angelina also gave birth to her own child by Brad Pitt, Shiloh Nouvel, who was born in Namibia whilst the couple were in Africa.

With Brad Pitt, Jolie has finally found a partner with whom she can share her humanitarian goals and ideals, as well as her dazzling Hollywood success. While it's certain that the twin challenges of her motherhood and her charity work will continue to take up much of Jolie's time, the movie offers just keep coming.

She is currently promoting 'Maleficent', which tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of her evil nemesis 'Maleficent', played by Jolie. It is set for release in 2014.