Angelina Jolie is the most popular woman in Hollywood who has received almost every possible cinema accolade. Her life is shadowed by scandal and drama, and Oscar nominations have been sprinkled with Golden Raspberries, yet she continues to develop her talent and push her limits. People are used to judging her by the opening sentences in the tabloids, but Angelina’s life is much more interesting than the scandalous headlines. She is an actress, director, philanthropist, and mother to children from all over the world. Charming and eccentric, Miss Jolie is Okolo Kino’s new leading lady.
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Angelina Jolie is the most popular woman in Hollywood who has received almost every possible cinema accolade. Her life is shadowed by scandal and drama, and Oscar nominations have been sprinkled with Golden Raspberries, yet she continues to develop her talent and push her limits. People are used to judging her by the opening sentences in the tabloids, but Angelina’s life is much more interesting than the scandalous headlines. She is an actress, director, philanthropist, and mother to children from all over the world. Charming and eccentric, Miss Jolie is Okolo Kino’s new leading lady.
If you can’t wait to see our next work, become a part of our project on patreon, and receive VIP perks and privileges for your contribution:
https://www.youtube.com/c/OkoloKino/join
https://www.patreon.com/okolokinotube
#okolokino #AngelinaJolie #documentary
Music by Epidemic Sound and Artlist
https://www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
https://artlist.io/LCT-322572
ANGELINA JOLIE PART 1
It was the year 1975. At a concert in London, the rock group Queen was playing Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. In an old garage on the outskirts of Redmond, two young geeks were founding the company Microsoft. Elton John was performing at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and the box office records were being broken by Steven Spielberg’s horror film Jaws. But Hollywood’s rising star Jon Voight and his wife Marcheline were not thinking about any of that, because their family was celebrating a new arrival.
On the 4th of June, in Los Angeles, Angelina Jolie Voight was born.
JON VOIGHT
Quote: 02:37
Angelina’s arrival filled Jon with more joy than his Oscar nomination for his role in Midnight Cowboy or his success in Deliverance, but it unfortunately failed to save his marriage. Her mother hoped that a second child would return her husband’s affections, but Voight was famous for his love affairs. A year after their baby arrived, the actor began dallying with the young Stacy Pickren his costar from the drama Coming Home. Shortly Marcheline and Jon divorced, meanwhile the film not only gifted him with a girlfriend, but also with the first Oscar of his career.
While her father basked in the spotlight and rubbed elbows with celebrities at parties, her mother was raising their two children. Angelina had just turned one, while her older brother James had just become potty-trained. Jon spent time with his children, but when a few years later Marcheline moved to New York, their meetings became drastically less. Angie and James saw their father only when he flew in for premieres or took them to film sets if they were close by. These moments caused the children to fall in love with cinema.
JON VOIGHT
Quote: 04:07
Despite this scare, Angelina was enamored by the film set and she started to make sets in her own house. The little girl would put on her mother’s clothes and makeup, and do shows while her brother would film her on camera. The family was charmed by her talent, and they saw that the girl was born to be on the big screen.
The first time Angie appeared on the screen was with her father. Her debut was in the comedy Lookin’ to Get Out where Jon was not only the lead actor, but also helped to write the screenplay. Because of his role in the production, the film featured both his daughter and his ex-wife. This is the only movie made in Hollywood which included the real father, mother, and child. Despite the fact that filming finished at the end of 1980, the reel made it to theaters only two years later. The little cutie had just turned seven and her character -- as well as her unusual preferences -- began to shine through. Instead of a fluffy pet, she preferred a lizard and a snake, and her first crush was Mr. Spock. Dreams of acting were replaced with those of becoming a vampire, which in a few years gave way to the dream of opening a funeral home. The girl had been struck by her grandfather’s funeral where she was shocked to see a crowd of sad people. Angie believed that parting with a loved one should be a celebration of their life, not a depressing gathering of despondency.
ANGELINA JOLIE
Quote: 06:03
Later Angelina was swept away by a new wave, hormones. In kindergarten she became a member of a group called “the Kissy Girls”.
ANGELINA JOLIE
Quote: 06:21
Similar antics despite seeming entertaining, continued with unenviable regularity. Marcheline returned to Los Angeles when Angelina turned 11. Her father helped her to get into a prestigious school where Hollywood’s richest children were educated. Angie did not fit into the elite clicks. Her classmates wore clothes from expensive malls and went to parties every weekend, parties to which Angelina was not invited. Unsurprisingly, the girl shopped in thrift stores, and her unusual appearance complete with braces caused her to be constantly teased. She recalls this time in her life as a time of extreme contrasts. One day Angie was being teased at school, and the next she was going to the Oscars with her father.
At her mother’s insistence, the girl tried her hand at modeling, and was, unfortunately, unsuccessful. Her wardrobe slowly filled with punk outfits and the reputation of an outsider latched on to her. Instead of friends, she attracted insomnia and nervous breakdowns, which quickly turned to scars. Not figuratively, she literally collected knives and was prone to using them.
ANGELINA JOLIE
Quote: 07:49
Children avoided Angie, and teachers couldn’t seem to find an approach to the little rebel. A few months later, she ended up in the therapist’s office. Angelina left the office diagnosed with a “tendency to antisocial psychopathy”.
Marcheline wanted to redirect her daughter’s energy toward something positive so she enrolled her in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, which she had once attended herself. Lee was a cult personality in Hollywood who had educated James Dean, Robert De Niro, Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, and Marilyn Monroe whom he considered his favorite student. The actress felt the same way about her teacher. According to Marilyn’s will, seventy-five percent of her estate went to Strasberg. Lee taught using the Stanislavsky method which teaches to use one’s personal memories, experiences, and emotions in order to act realistically and authentically. Angelina acted in plays and perfected the basics of the acting profession. The theatre truly captured the girl. But two years later Angie left the school because she felt that she had enough life experience and memories to act effectively using that method. And despite the girl’s logical reasoning, it’s more likely that she left the theater because of a love interest. Angelina’s first relationship was like something out of a grotesque erotic horror film. At fourteen she brought home her sixteen-year-old boyfriend. Marcheline realized that lecturing her or forbidding her to date would only result in her running away, so she let the couple live with her in their house. Her mother tried to remain in control of her suddenly mature and rebellious daughter but had to struggle to do it. At this young age, Angelina began living a wild sexually active life. And still, it wasn’t enough for the teens. Later the actress admitted that she didn’t like tender caresses and in order to reach a real level of intimacy she would enlist the help of her knife collection.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote: 10:12
The young girl cut herself all over. One day in a burst of passion, while drawing the letter “X” on her shoulder she accidentally cut her vein with a razor blade. She was saved by a team of paramedics, and after she was released from the hospital, Angelina ended things with her boyfriend.
When Angie turned sixteen, she finally developed a friendship with her father. After several pubescent years had passed she returned to the theater and Jon became the future actress’s main mentor. The young woman had matured and decided to try a career in modeling again. This time, fate smiled at her. The first few photoshoots brought a small splash of popularity. Then she appeared in a few short films by her brother, who had been studying at the USC School of Cinema-Television. Six months later Angelina moved to the US fashion capital, New York. The move allowed her to increase her list of job opportunities and be free of her parents’ supervision. The young woman was filmed simultaneously in several music videos by the bands “The Lemonheads” and “Meat Lofe”, and worked on a few shorts made by her newfound New York friends.
In 1992 this budding actress with no screen credits got lucky. Angelina was cast as the lead role in a real Hollywood project with a budget of five million dollars. The fantasy action Cyborg 2, was the sequel to the popular reel with Jean-Claude Van Damme, which captivated viewers with its post-apocalyptic sets and martial arts. Unfortunately, the viewers’ sweetheart and director opted out of the sequel. They were replaced by Michael Schroeder whose talent was considered questionable even among directors in the B movie scene. Despite the story being about a sexy cyborg-killer who had escaped from a laboratory with her martial arts teacher, Angie was thrilled at the chance to work on a real film. However, after seeing it thrill was replaced by horror. The picture was filled with out-of-date special effects sprinkled in between awkwardly choreographed fight scenes and mediocre acting. The studio hid its shame by deciding to not release the movie. The sequel to Cyborg was released on VHS not as a separate film but as an add-on to the first installment. To this day the reel is considered the worst in Angelina’s career. At the time she thought that the failure would be fatal, and for a year afterward, she turned down all auditions. Nevertheless, the film became famous for one thing, it was the first movie featuring the young woman under her stage name. She dropped her father’s last name and replaced it with her middle name. That’s how the world was introduced to Angelina Jolie.
It was only in 1995 that the twenty-year-old actress once again appeared in a movie. The theme of technology shadowed Jolie here too, though instead of the future, the picture featured computers of the present time. The crime comedy Hackers told the story of some high schoolers who break into the forbidden server of an industrial corporation, where Angelina shared the screen with the talented British actor Jonny Lee Miller. Preparation for shooting included trips to hackers’ lairs, where the actors were shown how servers are broken into in real life. Ironically, in the film, when scenes showed the insides of the computer they used real models because the director thought computer graphics looked too fake.
While filming Miller and Jolie developed a romance, and the actors didn’t have to pretend in front of the cameras, however after they finished the Angelina declared that she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. Though Jonny seemed to take that as more of a challenge, and continued to follow the actress everywhere.
Unfortunately, the second film in Angie’s career was also a bust. They invested 20 million dollars in Hackers but the box office brought in only half that sum. The critics were not very supportive either, as they bashed the main characters’ lack of depth, the directing, and the talent of the acting ensemble.
The young actress had learned from her previous experience, and this time she weathered the scathing reviews much more calmly. She didn’t stop going to auditions, actually quite the opposite, she even appeared in two more films in ‘96.
In the movie Love Is All There Is Jolie tried herself in a comedic role for the first time. The story of two feuding families whose children fall in love on the stage of an amateur theater where they are putting on Romeo and Juliet is a Shakespearian comedy, served up in a humorous tone. That year turned out to be a popular one for the retelling of that particular story.
Baz Luhrmann’s drama jumpstarted Leonardo DiCaprio’s career and won over the hearts of millions of fans, but Angelina was not so fortunate. The film’s success was aptly reflected in its box office profits. Making sixty thousand dollars after the release is a failure. And in addition, Angie once more didn’t impress the critics. This was turning into a habit.
The second reel of that year was the drama Foxfire where the actress got to play the independent and stubborn Legs. The film tells of the complex relationships between teens, and of first loves, and disillusionment experienced by a group of girlfriends. During this film, Jolie met her new flame. Angelina said that she was used to giving all of herself to her characters, which is why while playing the role of a gruff rebel girl in a leather jacket and jeans she got so used to Legs that she didn’t notice herself falling in love with her costar Jenny Shimizu. Jenny was a proclaimed lesbian and 10 years later would maintain that that was the beginning of a long affair between the women, though she published a retraction of her words soon after. Whatever may be hiding in this story, a few months later it came to an end. In that same year, 1996, Angelina and Jonny Lee Miller reunited and shortly after had a wedding.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote: 17:56
Angelina and Jonny did not read vows at the altar or wear a dress and tuxedo. The couple went to their ceremony in leather pants and white dress shirts. They wrote each other’s names on their backs in blood, and instead of rings, pricked each other’s fingers and bound themselves with a bloody oath of eternal love. The eternal love lasted a little over a year after which Jolie divorced Lee Miller.
Meanwhile, Foxfire joined the list of the actress’s unsuccessful film credits. This string of failures caused Angelina to fall into depression which she nursed with the help of drugs. Her next movies had similar fates and Jolie once again wanted to leave the acting profession behind.
It all began with the release of the crime thriller Playing God where she starred opposite David Duchovny. The picture was filmed in ’95 but test previews threw viewers into confusion. Because of the complex narrative and multiple holes in the plot, the film was redirected for further editing which continued for two years. The studio anticipated defeat and decided to attract audiences with a sly plan. The trailer was filled with the naked bodies of Jolie and Duchovny but these scenes were never added into the movie. The critics and viewers showed their contempt for this deceit with poor ticket sales and scathing reviews. This result was a hit for Duchovny’s reputation which was just beginning to gather momentum thanks to the success of The X-Files. For Angelina, this bad year just got worse when the big screen was simultaneously graced with the black comedy Mojave Moon which received similar reviews and flopped at the box office. Critics did not attack the actress directly, but she had record-breaking bad luck with the productions she was in. The only silver lining was shooting a Rolling Stones clip, where she walked around the streets of New York in just her lingerie. The song became a Top 20 hit that year, and Angelina was again remembered by viewers only thanks to her natural beauty.
Jolie broke the chain of bad events when she agreed to act in the historical TV movie True Women. The insubordinate and willful image of Georgia suited Angie, and for the first time, the camera did not exploit her sexuality. Short shorts and form-fitting jeans were exchanged for long modest dresses, and the critics’ wrath exchanged for unfamiliar praise.
Angelina had found her stride and increased her success with another TV project. The two-part biographical drama George Wallace told of a scandalous governor of the state of Alabama and shed light on the subject of racism in the period between the fifties and seventies. The lead role was played by Garry Sinise whose part in Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 made him an actor of the highest category, and the project was directed by John Frankenheimer who made the cult drama The Manchurian Candidate. Acting in the company of so many stars allowed Jolie to explore new horizons of her talent which the public would soon appreciate.
Then she took part in a crime drama Hell’s Kitchen which was about the drugs, poverty, and betrayal surrounding a dangerous crime-filled neighborhood in Manhattan. Alongside Rosanna Arquette and William Forsythe Jolie once again gave a compelling performance but the picture went largely unnoticed. On its first day, it made eleven thousand dollars at the box office though its budget was six million. The studio decided not to wait for negative reviews, took it out of theaters, and released it directly on tape.
However, this little hitch did not stop her. Television producers had already noticed her, so it wasn’t surprising that in that same year, she received an offer to shoot a picture for HBO. The channel is known for its big-budget projects which are just as good as anything you see at the movie theater. This time the producers invested their money in the biography of the very popular model Gia Carangi, whose life and successful career were cut short because of an addition to hard drugs.
The director Michael Christopher saw in Angelina the perfect candidate for the lead role, but the actress was scared by the uncanny similarity between her and the heroine, and for a long time refused to take the part.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote:23:09
The director was overjoyed when Angie decided to do battle with her inner demons and after much convincing agreed to play Gia. While preparing for the role, the actress met with the model’s close friends and studied her diaries which were used as the basis for the screenplay. Jolie refused to communicate with her family and remained completely isolated the whole time the film was shooting. The result of her approach is evident in every scene. Carangi is depicted with eerie accuracy and a few of the scenes even eclipsed the screen adaptation of Trainspotting featuring her husband a year earlier. The realism, cruelty, and despair of the picture are striking. Through the tragic story of young Gia, the creators showed the backstage of the eighties, where behind the bright outfits and camera flashes there hid thousands of broken lives. By the end of the filming process, Angelina felt only exhausted and depleted.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote: 24:35
As the actress feared, using the Stanislavsky method exacerbated her personal problems. She felt like she had given the camera everything and had nothing left to offer the viewer. She pushed her loved ones away once again and set off into the unknown. The closing scenes of Gia for which Angie had to shave her head, helped her to get lost in the crowd. For a few months, she traveled America spending the night in roadside motels, and then headed to New York where she started studying directing and screenwriting at a university. This attempt to outrun her depression didn’t help and by December of 1997 she dropped out. At that same time, George Wallace was nominated for seven Emmys and at the beginning of ’98, the picture won a Golden Globe for best TV Film. It was the nomination for this prestigious film award that returned Angelina her confidence. She would remember that evening for the rest of her life since in addition to the success of her colleagues she also celebrated a personal victory when she won the nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In her acceptance speech, she thanked the director who created a wonderful atmosphere on set and helped the actress who had lost all hope of success believe in her own talent once again.
Two weeks after the ceremony Gia premiered on HBO and millions of people fell in love with Jolie’s acting. A year later she would once again take the stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and receive her Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress. In a matter of weeks, Angie’s career did a 180 and dozens of offers came flooding in. By the end of February of ’98, she had started shooting her next film.
For the first time in her career, she was a full-fledged member of a star-studded cast. The director Mike Newell whose Donnie Brasco had excelled at the box office the previous year chose a quartet of popular actors, and Angelina’s recent victories put her in the ranks of John Cusack, Cate Blanchett, and Billy Bob Thornton. In the romantic comedy Pushing Tin Jolie played Thornton’s wife. Coincidentally the on-screen couple had the same manager who always said that he never wanted them to meet because he feared they would marry. The actress was deterred by these jokes. There were many rumors in Hollywood of Billy Bob’s intrigues. He had gone through four wives already and his last marriage with a Playboy model ended in divorce and accusations of domestic violence. Besides, he was already engaged to the actress Laura Dern. That could have been the reason that Angelina constantly avoided her filming partner but playing a married couple brought the actors closer together. They would often get dinner together and spend evenings having friendly discussions. No one on set saw any particular sparks, just two colleagues talking.
ART LINSON
quote: 30:01
The public didn’t share Linson’s views. The picture was released a year later and Jolie received her share of criticism, though most of the discontent was directed at the plot and her character’s behavior rather than her acting abilities. Despite this failure, the film would impact Jolie’s fate, but more on that later.
The actress constantly traded one movie set for another and in 1998 shot two more pictures. In the melodrama Playing by Heart, she shared her screen time with Patricia Clarkson, Ellen Burstyn, Dennis Quaid, and Sean Connery. The story contained six plotlines connecting eleven characters which at first glance had nothing in common. This popular writing stunt which would soon be used by dozens of screenwriters didn’t help the picture and Angelina added another failed project to her filmography.
After that, she agreed to take a role in a thriller called The Bone Collector. The director Philip Noyce was enthralled with Angelina’s performance in Gia, while the actress was excited for an opportunity to appear next to Denzel Washington. The story tells of a serial killer who is caught by an inexperienced policewoman and a quadriplegic forensics expert. The director admitted that Universal Pictures wanted another rip-off of the thriller Seven, since after David Fincher’s classic every studio tried to milk the newly popular genre. A box office profit of 150 million showed that the supply was supported by the viewer’s demand through critics were not very impressed with the reel. The reviews highlighted the fact that the actors’ performances were better than the script deserved. Nonetheless, this was the first successful film featuring Jolie. The Bone Collector made more than all of the actress’s previous films combined.
The blossoming of her career happened to coincide with the divorce from Jonny Lee Miller.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote: 32:17
Their “eternal matrimony” was replaced by friendship. They still talk and Jolie considers herself indebted to Lee Miller. He saved her from her drug addiction which got worse after the filming of Gia.
In order to talk about her next job, we have to travel back seven years. The young Winona Ryder was taking Hollywood by storm with her performances in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. She was reading the memoirs of Susanna Kaysen and dreaming of acting in the screen adaption, but the rights belonged to Columbia Pictures and the studio wasn’t in a hurry to invest in a psychological drama. Winona spent five years trying to get the green light for the project and in 1998 after hundreds of script variations and dozens of candidates for the director’s chair, the film was approved. The director was personally chosen by Ryder. James Mangold’s debut picture Heavy won over Winona and viewers at the Sundance Festival. The story of women with raw character traits attracted the attention of dozens of talented actresses. Lisa Rowe was especially magnetic, a charismatic persona whom James dubbed "Jack Nicholson in a skirt”. Mangold was choosing between Claire Daines, Courtney Love, and Angelina Jolie, but after his first conversation with the latter, realized that her competitors didn’t stand a chance.
JAMES MANGOLD
quote 33:59
Next, the acting ensemble was joined by Elisabeth Moss, Vanessa Redgrave, Jared Leto, and Whoopi Goldberg. The film was shot in a working psychiatric clinic in Harrisburg over the course of four months. During that time, in keeping with her character, Jolie avoided her costars, especially Winona Ryder with whom she never spoke off-camera. Another obsession with her role once again took its toll on Angelina’s condition. After filming was over, the actress declared that she was exhausted and needed to recharge, so she decided to voluntarily admit herself to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
Winona’s obsession and seven-year battle for the film did not bring the desired dividends. Girl, Interrupted bombed at the box office because of its gigantic (at least for a drama) budget of forty million dollars, and not only did the reviews criticize the film, but so did the author of the book. Susanna Kaysen accused the director of changing the storyline and adding irrelevant scenes. She was especially infuriated with Lisa and Susanna’s escape to Disneyland. The only thing that the author liked was the acting of the main characters. Ryder had been nominated for an Oscar twice and was open about the fact that she expected to win the coveted statuette this time. To her surprise, the picture was nominated in only one category. Hollywood’s elite decided that the candidate most deserving their support was Angelina Jolie for Best Supporting Actress. Over the next two months, the actress received an Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe, and on her first attempt celebrated victory at the Oscars.
Angie’s triumph was immediately eclipsed by her behavior after the ceremony. Jolie was giving interviews while holding her brother’s hand and kept slipping in that he was the best man in her life. While the public values strong family ties, the next morning saw all the newspapers plastered with the photo of Angelina passionately kissing her brother. Soon after she explained that it was just a way of showing their affection and that the speculation in the press was baseless. Nonetheless, this event overshadowed the most important day of her career.
Journalists shrouded her next work in rumors once more. In 2000 Angelina and Antonio Banderas appeared in the mystical drama Original Sin. It was a remake of Francois Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid where the main roles were played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve this time directed by Michael Christofer who had already worked with the actress on Gia. Unfortunately, the success of the reel was eclipsed by an incident on set. Jolie had agreed to act out the sex scenes only on the condition that she would be completely naked. Banderas supported this idea and the material ended up so full of explicit scenes that Cristofer had to throw out almost everything. According to journalists Angelina and Antonio really had sex on camera and the yellow press printed endless articles about their “secret romance”. Reporters even harassed Banderas’ fiancée, the actress Melanie Griffith with questions. Assumptions and rumors were once again quelled by a statement from Angelina. While working on the film, she eloped from the scene with a new lover, who turned out to be the aforementioned Billy Bob Thornton. The newspapers were no longer tempted to write about Original Sin and it headed towards destruction at the box office. Critics tore apart the directing and even touched on the acting of both main characters. However Jolie wasn’t worried, she was distracted by her quickly accelerating romance. On May 5th, 2000 Angelina married Billy Bob. The second wedding once again was not elaborate. A little church in Las Vegas held the ceremony for less than two hundred dollars, and no one was invited but their witnesses. Of course, Thornton’s checkered past was scrutinized but the couple was convinced that their union was eternal.
BILLY BOB THORNTON
quote 38:41
After the wedding, Thornton dedicated a song to Angelina, and a month later they were showing off their tattoos of each other’s names to reporters. Another shocking display occurred at the premiere of the action Gone in 60 Seconds which Jolie filmed in 1999.
The remake of a 1974 movie of the same name attracted the actress because of the chance to take a break from serious dramatic roles.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote 39:40
While filming Angelina truly did have fun. She learned extreme driving as well as carjacking and the music video director Dominic Sena ensured that the action was non-stop throughout. Besides Jolie, the film featured two more Oscar winners Nicolas Cage and Robert Duvall. Still, they didn’t try to turn the reel into a serious drama that would magnify the talent of the acting ensemble. The director didn’t disguise the fact that he was creating a typical summer blockbuster, which unfortunately didn’t win over the critics or succeed at the box office. Gone in 60 Seconds made more than 200 million dollars, but according to calculations, Disney studios lost at least a hundred on it.
In total Angelina appeared in seventeen films and received three Golden Globe Awards and an Oscar. Despite this, her name was still unknown to the wider public since she had never been in anything that became an international blockbuster. The trajectory of her career was changed by the screen adaptation of the game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The director Simon West could not imagine anyone but Jolie in the lead role.
SIMON WEST
quote 42:05
But to be honest the actress didn’t share the director’s enthusiasm. The hypersexuality of the main heroine irritated Jolie, especially since her first husband had often preferred to spend the evening playing Tomb Raider on his Play Station to spending time with his wife. In addition, Angelina had just turned down a similar entertaining project. She had been invited to work on Charlie’s Angels but she wasn’t drawn to any of the main characters and she had a hard time imagining herself as part of any kind of team. This time the director did not back down. Simon convinced Jolie by pointing out their similar looks and character and saying the story would show the woman from a new angle, but Angie gave in only after West told her about the possible shooting locations. The picture was supposed to be filmed in Iceland, England, China, and Cambodia. It was this chance to travel to different corners of the planet which broke the actress’s resolve.
The screenplay dedicated a small part to Lara Croft’s father who had gone missing and Angelina suggested that they invite Jon Voight to play the role.
After agreeing, Jolie moved to London where she spent 6 months preparing for the part. Nowadays no one is impressed with strict diets or grueling hours at the gym, but for Angelina, who had never led a very healthy lifestyle, this preparation seemed impossibly difficult. The usual cigarettes and alcohol were replaced with protein shakes and yoga. After that followed, dozens of exercises from regular fitness, kickboxing, and rowing to learning to shoot with British special forces. By the end of the preparation period, Jolie had transformed and acquired newfound confidence in herself. In one interview she admitted that she was really happy with her body and for the first time, and felt amazing. The only thing which she described as being truly horrible was the etiquette classes where she learned manners appropriate for her heroine’s status.
Jolie spent the next half year shooting, where she insisted on performing all her stunts without the help of a double. But in one of the first extreme scenes where Lara is hanging from the beam of her house, the actress fell and twisted her ankle. Because of the trauma, the team had to wait for two weeks before they could refilm the scene. After that, in order to help Angie, they hired a double named Eunice Hathart who had already played the actress in her most recent picture. Their collaboration grew into a friendship, and Eunice continues to be Angelina’s double to this day. But while filming Tomb Raider the star drove the stuntwoman crazy. Hathart said that Jolie was the most stubborn woman she had ever met. Having barely healed from her sprain, Angelina insisted on filming the scene with the log without any safety harnesses. The stunt choreographers were dismayed because one wrong step could result in death, and they spent a whole day convincing the actress to change her mind. Then she rejected Eunice’s services in the scene where they travel through the jungle. Snakes and other living things were constantly dropping into the open roof of the Land Rover, forcing the film crew to have to shoot dozens of takes. Jolie was disgusted by the experience but still did not let herself be replaced in the scene.
The picture is filled with references to the game like Lara’s signature moves, shouts, and outfits. At first, Angelina refused to wear short shorts but agreed in order to appease fans of the game. For that same reason, they used a push-up bra which caused the actress’s breasts to look like the original character’s.
Jolie’s rival was played by Daniel Craig. Ironically according to the script Alex West is an American, and Lara Croft is British, which is exactly the opposite of the actor’s citizenship in real life.
Well, Angelina was able to convincingly portray the character from the game and also fulfill her dream of traveling. Their last stop was Cambodia, where American cinematographers filmed for the first time since 1964. The country stood out not for its beautiful views but for the wreckage left after the civil war. In the 20 years leading up to the film, more than forty thousand residents of this region have suffered from anti-personnel landmine explosions. Jolie was stunned by the fact that even then children died daily from tripping the countless mines. The actress had never heard of such stories in the Hollywood hills and on her way home realized that this trip had changed her forever.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider premiered in the summer of 2001. Over the next three months, the picture made a quarter of a billion dollars in movie theaters and brought Angelina unmatched levels of fame. The army of fans who had seen her on the screen added new members to its ranks daily thanks to the endless stream of collectible merchandise. The actress’s face was plastered on t-shirts, mugs, backpacks, and notepads and in a few months, the toy stores were flooded with hundreds of thousands of action figures created in Jolie’s image.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote 49:01
The actress instantly became world-famous, which she was not very happy about. Angelina had been impacted by what she saw while shooting, and she turned down lucrative contracts and an endless line of films. She spent the rest of the year on United Nations field missions and visited Pakistan, Ecuador, Sierra-Leone, Tanzania, and Cambodia. She also donated one million dollars to a fund that helped refugees, which was the largest donation from one person in their history. She also donated all the proceeds from her memoirs which she wrote while she traveled to the same organization. In August at the United Nations conference in Geneva Angelina was named an official Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees and over the next 20 years she would visit over 50 of our planet’s hotspots and help millions of refugees, but more on that later. At this point, Angelina’s sudden transformation worried the people close to her, but her husband supported her desire to adopt a child. The couple gathered all the necessary documents after which they decided to trust their luck and visit only one orphanage. In Battambang, Jolie saw Maddox for the first time. The one-year-old boy caught her attention straight away, but before receiving the rights to adoption Angelina had to wait for a decision from the American government for three months as it had previously forbidden adoption from Cambodia because of accusations of child trafficking. Maddox was finally reunited with his new family in December of 2001 in Namibia where the actress was shooting her next film.
The drama Beyond Borders seemed like the perfect project to Angelina. When portraying on screen a volunteer who travels to hotspots Angelina relived the experiences she had accumulated over the last year. The film crew traveled to such remote places in the world that were so isolated from civilization that many native residents saw white people for the first time. The film also depicts real victims of anti-personnel mines.
Despite the fact that the role of Sarah Jordan was written especially for Catherine Zeta-Jones who had dropped out of the project because of her pregnancy, Jolie was able to expose the real horrors and the state of our world, where things seem hopeless not only for the victims but for the people who are expending all their strength trying to help them. Originally the picture was supposed to be directed by Oliver Stone, but when he lost his heroine he decided to move on to another project, the historical drama Alexander to which he would soon invite Angelina. But for now, Beyond Borders was anticipating a bust at the box office and devastating reviews from the critics. The reaction of the press hit Jolie hard because she had hoped that the film’s success would attract society’s attention to the terrorism happening in our world. Before the reel was released, and three months after adopting Maddox, Angie split from her second husband. Thornton supported his wife in theory but realized he was not ready for fatherhood, and he did not share her passion for charity work. Angelina filed for a divorce, got full custody of her son, and removed the tattoo from her arm. Her life changed and a provocative rebel was replaced with a mature woman who wanted to make the world a better place.
ANGELINA JOLIE
quote 52:59
Once again, the actress received a role that reflected her inner state. In the melodrama Life or Something Like It, a career-driven TV reporter finds out that she’s going to die a week later, after which she changes her life completely. This was another reel featuring Jolie which was bound for financial failure, but still, the actress seemed to imitate her character, by stepping out of her comfort zone, and leaving Los Angeles. Angelina moved to England and settled in the house where a few years prior Stanley Kubrick had filmed Eyes Wide Shut. In England, the actress enjoyed her freedom from the persistent paparazzi and actively busied herself with charity work for the UN. Shortly after the six-month filming marathon for the Tomb Raider sequel ensued.
The sequel had several important changes. The director’s chair was filled by Jan de Bont who had become famous thanks to the Speed dilogy and the role of the heroine’s main rival was given to Gerard Butler. The acting ensemble was also joined by Til Schweiger and Djimon Hounsou. Lara’s second around-the-world journey included stops in Greece, Wales, Kenya, and Hong Kong, though the Chinese government disliked the portrayal of its country so much that they forbid it from being shown in their country.
The next installment of the Tomb Raider adventure was charged with so many action scenes that Jolie couldn’t handle all of them herself. She was helped by a whole team of stunt doubles, and in the scene where she jumps from a building, actors were replaced by the inventors of the wingsuits themselves. But this time neither fans of the game nor critics showed their support for the film. It crashed and burned at the box office, though the reviews noted that this time the stunts and chase scenes were much more spectacular than in the previous parts. The viewers were also skeptical of the Jeep four-by-four cloying advertising campaign which invested in ten percent of the film’s budget and created a limited edition car that appeared in dealerships on the day the film premiered.
Losses forced the studio to scrap plans for a third part, but this didn’t disappoint the fans or Angelina who was tired of playing the sharp-witted Lara Croft. Nonetheless, she agreed to embark on a new adventure.
Jolie spent four days shooting the action film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which was filmed in just three weeks. Despite the pace of the work, the project had been in preparation for over a decade. The director Kerry Conran got interested in computer graphics while studying animation during an internship at Disney though he didn’t take a job at the studio. In 1994 he hung a blue screen in his living room and shot a six-minute short which he edited on his laptop over the next four years. The short attracted the attention of the producer Jon Avnet who helped him to write a complete screenplay, haunted the studio thresholds, and sent proposals to popular actors. That’s how, in addition to Angelina, the debuting director’s team was able to get Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow who played the main roles. It also had a budget of 71 million dollars. A year later when the CGI was finished the picture would bring Paramount studios terrible losses and would bury the director’s career, though Conran maintains to this day that he was the victim of studio politics. Originally Kerry had planned on filming the movie twenty times cheaper. Of course, then he would not have had that cast and had much less computer graphics, though he probably would have broken even at the box office. But even the official number of 71 million seemed fraudulent to Conran and he was sure that he spent only half that on the film.
After this small role, Angelina agreed to play in a picture where the camera didn’t leave her for a second. The crime thriller Taking Lives tells of an FBI agent who is following the trail of a serial killer. Again the press’s attention was focused not on what was happening on screen but on the rumors of an affair between Jolie and Ethan Hawke who was playing one of the main roles. A year later the actor would divorce Uma Thurman but whether or not Angie had anything to do with that remains a mystery. The role of Illeana Scott would bring the actress the first Golden Raspberry nomination of her career. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t have to wait long for the second one, because that same year she acted in the historical drama Alexander.
Oliver Stone brought together an impressive cast for the picture. Jolie shared the screen with Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Anthony Hopkins, and Christopher Plummer. And for the nth time, Angelina portrayed on screen a character similar to her own personality. Olympias was the powerful wife of a king who loved snakes and enchanted those around her. By the way, originally Stone wanted to depict the heroine with historical accuracy and her costume was a long dress and shawl which covered her body and hair, but the actress insisted on a revealing outfit. According to Jolie, Olympias’s main weapon was her sexuality which she deliberately showcased. Also, Angelina played Alexander’s mother although she’s only a year older than Colin Farrell.
Stone worked on the film for roughly three years. The cost of production exceeded 150 million dollars and became the most expensive project in the director’s history. Unfortunately, the critics were ruthless towards him. Devastating reviews criticized the plot and the actors’ performance as well as the directing, especially the disorganized fight scenes. The picture received six Golden Raspberry nominations including Worst Picture. That’s the story of how Angelina was nominated for the least desired award in Hollywood two years running, and the epic reel headed for disaster at the box office. Greece wanted to forbid its release altogether because of the bisexual portrayal of Alexander of Macedonia. Ironically, in Greece, the picture did best at the box office and a year later was released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Demand was higher than the supply, and the director even made a special extended edition which was bought by more than one million people. So, Alexander set a sales record for Warner Brothers studios and made up the losses from the theater release.
Next Angelina appeared in the drama The Fever. She agreed to act in it because the plot drew attention to problems in third world countries, but the picture saw neither fame nor success in the theaters.
2004 was the most productive year in the actress’s career, but also the worst year. However, all was not lost thanks to the animated film Shark Tale. Jolie was the voice of a down-on-her-luck fish Lola, and was joined by Will Smith, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, and the hilarious duo of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. Interesting that in the role of Don Lino, De Niro finally got to boss around the famous director who voiced the nervous Whale Wash owner, Sykes.
Dreamworks studio created a world that was filled with allusions any American would recognize, from famous brands to cinematography. It included hundreds of nods at pop culture beginning with quotes from The Godfather, Scarface, and The Goodfellas to a billboard with Jaws on it, and the interior from the Titanic which was easily recognizable in the sharks’ lair.
Shark Tale took the theaters by storm and was in the Top 10 best films of the year, though critics were not happy with the animated comedy. They didn’t think the adult humor and difficult plot were appropriate for a cartoon.
After this fun and simple job, Angelina agreed to act in another entertaining project, but at the time she signed the contract she had no idea that the comedy action Mr. & Mrs. Smith would change her life forever.
END OF PART ONE