Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography

by Andrew Morton

  Louwerse made his own media splash, receiving a standing ovation when he arrived at the office of Access Hollywood the following morning. His unusual and exclusive interview was broadcast on heavy rotation nationwide. There was a price to be paid, however, for a midnight swim with a future screen goddess. When he arrived home at three in the morning, smelling of booze and soaking wet, his irate girlfriend asked what the hell he had been doing. His reply, “Swimming with Angelina Jolie,” was perhaps not the most judicious in the circumstances. With that she headed for bed, while he slept on the couch. The next day she moved out.

  On the way out, too, was Jonny Lee Miller. The separation was made formal on February 3, ten days after the Golden Globes, the couple citing “irreconcilable differences” in papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. “Jonny and I are still crazy about each other, but we have the sense of needing to move on in different directions” was her somewhat disingenuous epitaph for the marriage.

  For Angie it was a new beginning, which began with a dark journey into her tremulous soul. A few days earlier she had articulated a manifesto for the rest of her life: “I can never stand still. While I’m alive I’m going to move as quickly as possible and live as much as I can, and I won’t consider if that is good or bad for my career.”

  Angie was as good as her word. She covered the walls of her trailer with porn, went to work in a mental hospital, and made a name for herself.

  The character that propelled her firmly into the public consciousness as an actor of note was Angelina herself. Or at least a variation of her. Like a lioness hunting a gazelle, she pounced on the part of Lisa Rowe, the wild, rebellious sociopath in Girl, Interrupted, and devoured it with unconcealed relish. “I’m Lisa; I identify with her,” she explained, arguing that after The Bone Collector she needed to play a less cerebral character. Angie had already bonded with the character of the sexy and coldly amoral young woman several years earlier, when she read Susanna Kaysen’s searing 1993 memoir about her stay in McLean Hospital, a private psychiatric institute in Massachusetts, during the socially turbulent sixties.

  Kaysen’s seventeen-month sojourn in the upscale but secure institution, where previous patients included poet Sylvia Plath, singer Ray Charles, and balladeer James Taylor, who based his song “Fire and Rain” on his experiences, prompted a provocative meditation on the nature of sanity, teenage female sexuality, adolescent angst, and the glib medical link between nonconformity and the label of mental illness. During her stay, Kaysen, who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, shared camaraderie, occasionally friendship, with the troubled young women on her ward.

  It was this latter theme that director James Mangold emphasized in the movie version of the book, whose title derives from a Vermeer painting, Girl Interrupted at Her Music. He and Winona Ryder, who played Susanna Kaysen, spent three years working on the project, Ryder viewing the movie as a “child of the heart.” By the time the movie was released it was Ryder’s heart that was broken, as Angie effortlessly walked away with all the honor and glory. From the moment she read for Mangold, she nailed the character of Lisa. Astonished by her portrayal, he stated, with characteristic Hollywood understatement, “God has given me a gift.” As Mangold later recalled: “It was clear to me that day that I was watching someone who was not acting. There was someone speaking through her; it was a part of herself.”

  Her performance was more hell than heaven, with Angie proving that the devil had not only the best tunes but also the best lines. Innately competitive, she stole every scene in which she appeared, experienced actors like Vanessa Redgrave and Whoopi Goldberg expertly mugged by this feral force of nature. Even the animals were upstaged. In one scene, when she was faced with a hissing cat, instead of flinching or swiping it away, Jolie calmly gave it the once-over, stared it down, and then hissed right back. As for Winona Ryder, she unwittingly provided the palette for Angie, her shaded, introspective performance the perfect canvas for Angie’s wild-eyed, ballsy inmate whose escapades, and frequent escapes from the hospital, gave the movie vibrant color and texture. Angie was the Hockney to Winona’s Vermeer. Film critic Pauline Kael described Angie’s picking off her feminine costars one by one like bits of sweater lint. “Those poor actresses,” she told Allen Barra. “She’s absolutely fearless in front of a camera. This girl would scare the crap out of Jack Nicholson in [One Flew Over the] Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  Looking back, Winona is keen to emphasize that she fought hard for Angie to get the part of Lisa, feeling sorry that the two-time Golden Globe winner was not yet taken seriously as an actress. “I never really felt like I got the chance to know her,” she blithely told BlackBook magazine of the three-month shoot, during which she was effectively incarcerated morning till night with Angie and her fellow actors in an unused building at a mental institution in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that was turned into a replica of 1960s McLean Hospital.

  It was hardly surprising. In the movie the two eventually become enemies, and with both of them deep into Method acting, personal interaction was edgy and often hostile. Playing an openly aggressive, emotionally inert sociopath, Angie kept in character even when the cameras had stopped rolling. If Winona complained of a headache or tiredness, Angie would shrug indifferently, explaining that Lisa never felt anything. Winona wasn’t the only one to feel Angie’s social freeze. One evening actress Brittany Murphy, who played Daisy, a socialite who lived on a diet of chicken and laxatives and was bullied by Lisa, was talking to Angie off set. After a brief chat Angie told her baldly, “Wait a minute—what am I talking to you for?” Murphy replied, “Can’t we take a break for a while?” Angie just laughed and moved away.

  Angie cocooned herself in her trailer, plastering the walls with porn pictures because they made her “feel provocative, open, and sensual,” and quietly smoking heroin, according to a close friend interviewed on the condition of anonymity. Her drug of choice helped her focus during the long hours of filming, but it also made her feel safe as she embarked on a high-risk, high-wire performance.

  She also read the script notes and comments her mother had sent her. It was part of a familiar mother/daughter routine, Marche always on hand to talk through her roles. Her mother even gave her the glove puppet that she ended up using in the film. And the family connection didn’t end there: “Angel of the Morning,” a song written by her uncle Chip Taylor, became part of the sound track.

  While Angie’s coolness to Winona and her costars could be wrapped up in the Method acting explanation, the simple fact was that she didn’t really bond with anyone on the set. “She couldn’t stand Winona,” observed a girlfriend. “Angie seemed to do much to undermine Winona in the name of acting.” That Winona had been engaged to Johnny Depp, the object of Angie’s teenage crush, may have added a further frisson. The leading lady was not the only one in her crosshairs. Angie argued with the director about the way he shot and eventually cut the movie, and publicly snubbed a production assistant, Andrea Mitchell, whom she had earlier befriended, at a party. Whether it was Angie staying in character as Lisa, or the first sign of diva behavior from a normally down-to-earth actor, her attitude irritated the hostess of the party, then a close friend of the actress’s. “It was rude and so unnecessary,” she observed. “She cut Andrea loose for some reason. When she tires of someone, she literally writes them out of her life.”

  Mick Jagger knew the feeling. During filming he invited her to the Stones concert in Philadelphia in March. While she had turned down his invitation to join him in Brazil, she did attend the gig but, much to Jagger’s chagrin, did not hang out with him backstage. After the concert she drove back to the film set. More revealing than her teasing indifference toward Jagger was the dance of deception between Angie and her mother. She called Marcheline after the concert and told her that Jagger had asked her to marry him. Whether it was said in jest or to please her mother, Marcheline was understandably thrilled and excited—until she called Jagger to congratulate him. He was utterly bemused,
complaining that Angie hadn’t even bothered to see him after the show, let along accept a proposal of marriage.

  While Jagger felt he was on the outside looking into Angie’s life, Timothy Hutton was very much on the inside. She might have stayed in character in her dealings with Winona Ryder and other actors on the set of Girl, Interrupted, but when she wanted, Angie quickly became Angie. During breaks in shooting, she frequently visited Hutton at his Pennsylvania home, which was near the film set. Angie immediately struck up an affectionate friendship with his ex-wife, Debra Winger, who lived nearby, and she “adored” their son, Noah, now a documentary filmmaker, who was then aged twelve. Angie and Hutton, who met on the set of Playing God, first appeared publicly as a couple at the Oscars in March.

  Angie could only look on as Billy Bob Thornton, nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for A Simple Plan, was passed over for the award in favor of James Coburn. Whatever the couple felt for each other, at that time their lives were going along different paths; while Angie was romancing Tim Hutton, Billy Bob and his fiancée, Laura Dern, were actively discussing starting a family. Laura Dern could barely contain her excitement, telling one visitor: “I’ve waited all my life to find the right man to have a baby with. It’s like a dream come true. We are both getting older and we are just so ready.” Her mother, Diane Ladd, was equally thrilled that her daughter had finally found “Mr. Right,” telling friends that she couldn’t wait to be a grandmother.

  Laura, then thirty-two, wanted everything to be perfect, flying English feng shui expert Karen Kingston from her home in Bali to “space clear” the couple’s new home in Mandeville Canyon. Kingston spent a day going through every room in the house, dispersing negative energy by putting special salt in the corners, strewing the floor with flower petals, ringing bells, and chanting in order to cast the demons out. She paid special attention to the windowless walk-in closet by the master bedroom that Laura and Billy Bob had chosen as the nursery. Laura’s only concerns focused on the swimming pool—her sister, Diane, had drowned in a tragic accident at the age of eighteen months—and the hill rats that were occasional unwelcome visitors.

  She was blissfully happy, indulging Billy Bob’s frequent stays at the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. The discreet hotel, a favorite hangout of the rock aristocracy, features numerous pictures of Thornton, including a larger-than-life head shot in the entrance foyer. Once inside, Billy Bob was king of all he surveyed, using the basement recording studios to make music till the early hours. A popular figure among the staff for his Southern courtesy, he liked to have what was known as his “harem,” his assistants, including Odessa Whitmire, at his beck and call. She was with him when he directed All the Pretty Horses, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, in New Mexico. During the shoot, in March and April 1999, she met and eventually became engaged to actor Matt Damon.

  It was perhaps just a coincidence that around this time Angie and Tim Hutton were seen making out at the hotel’s open-air bar. Patrons, including a session musician and his partner, were mesmerized by their public display of affection, the consensus being that the couple should get themselves a room. Whether or not her behavior was aimed at making Billy Bob jealous, it certainly fit in with Angie’s exhibitionist tendencies. In April, when Pushing Tin was released, the New York Post reported Angie and Tim in a “late-night liplock” at McAleer’s Pub on Amsterdam Avenue in New York, while a married couple who went out for dinner with them found their company “boring” because they only had eyes—and lips, mouths, and teeth—for each other. The same month, when Tim introduced her to his friend musician Neil Young at his postconcert party at Madison Square Garden, reports again focused on the couple’s public smooching.

  Apart from the sexual attraction, Angie’s decision to take up drumming to please Tim, and their discussions about renovation projects, which ultimately came to naught, showed an unusual degree of commitment. The couple was so enraptured by each other that rather than buy engagement rings, they discussed tattooing their ring fingers. When Angie had a runic “H” tattooed on the inside of her wrist, it was assumed it was a sign of devotion to her current squeeze. She later said it was “H” for Haven, her brother’s surname.

  As with much in Angie’s life, nothing was quite as it seemed. Didactic in her film choices, she was equally compartmentalized in her personal life, particularly when it came to romance. Whether he liked it or not, Tim Hutton was just one suitor in the revolving door of her life. He sensed as much, coming to realize that, even though he was older, more experienced, and an accredited heartbreaker, he was simply a pawn being toyed with by a ruthless queen in a chess game he had no understanding of. “I feel like I am just a piece of luggage on an airport carousel waiting to be picked up,” he whined. “Please pick me, please pick me.”

  Her wild ride during her twenties was simply Angie catching up after the adventures of her teenage years, when she focused on getting a handhold on Hollywood’s greasy pole. As her stage mother, Lauren Taines, explains: “As a teenager Angie didn’t date; she was entirely focused on her career. So all the wildness came out when she had made it as an actor. She was having the time of her life.”

  NINE

  My brother and I are going to get married.

  —ANGELINA JOLIE AT A FRIEND’S PARTY

  It was the moment she had waited for her whole adult life. At last Marcheline Bertrand was about to meet her rock-and-roll idol, Mick Jagger. Although they had been talking on the phone for nearly two years, they had yet to see each other in the flesh. As the big day approached, Marcheline could hardly contain her nervous excitement. She flew to Las Vegas in mid-April 1999 for the show, heading backstage at the MGM Gardens to say hello before the band took the stage.

  The first person she saw was Charlie Watts, who knew all about Jagger’s crush on her daughter, having acted as go-between when Mick slumped into a depression after Angie refused to speak to him. He pointed out Mick’s dressing room, which was down a long corridor. As she made that lonely walk, Marche could barely contain her sense of anticipation about meeting the man of her dreams. Her timing, however, could not have been worse. Suddenly Jagger emerged from his dressing room, a man in a hurry heading for the stage.

  “Hi. I’m Marcheline,” she said.

  Mick smiled and said, “Oh, it’s so good to meet you,” but he was in a rush. “Look—I have to go onstage now. Can we talk after the show?” He gave her an airy wave and went to take his bow. Marcheline was completely devastated by what she considered a snub. Nothing could console her. She watched the concert, but never went to the after-party. Nor did she ever speak with him again. Though he didn’t know it, Mick Jagger had fallen prey to the Bertrand freeze.

  Marche put a brave face on her disappointment, telling friends she’d had the time of her life. She would later describe it as a “wild and magical” evening in which she partied until late. While Mick Jagger had fallen out of favor, he was in a perverse way responsible for saving her life. Days later she fell ill, at first thinking she had come down with pneumonia as a result of her brief flirtation with a rock-and-roll night out. After a series of tests over the next few weeks, her greatest fear was confirmed—she had cancer. The curse of the Bertrand family had struck again, this time taking the form of ovarian cancer. Thankfully it was discovered in the early stages, and under the care of the internationally recognized cancer surgeon Dr. Beth Karlan at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills, she went into remission. Marche felt that if she hadn’t fallen ill right after the Stones concert, her cancer would have been discovered too late. “I never imagined they would play an important part in saving my life,” she noted later.

  During this very stressful period, Jon Voight was a constant visitor, spending hours at Cedars-Sinai as Marche recovered from the operation. Her younger sister, Debbie, had her bags packed, ready to visit and renew a relationship that had hit the rocks during James’s college graduation in 1995. As Debbie was about to begin the drive f
rom home, Marcheline said that she wasn’t yet ready to meet her. She would never see her sister again.

  As she gradually recovered, Marcheline asked her ex-husband if she could move in with him. As he only had a small two-bedroom rented apartment, he suggested that she move back into their first-ever apartment on Roxbury Drive. When he gave it the once-over, he could see that the landlord had neglected the one-bedroom apartment, so Voight spent around $30,000 on general maintenance, new carpets, furniture, and drapes. Ever the perfectionist, Marcheline complained that the curtains were half an inch too short. While his concern and generosity toward Marcheline earned Jon some brownie points with Angie, he had still racked up a large emotional debt. As a girlfriend who knew Angie well at this time remarked: “She didn’t really want him around. She wanted to punish him for the way she believed he had treated his wife and children.”

  Angie articulated her own deep-seated fears about the family curse artistically, writing her first script, called Skin, about a girl (a thinly disguised Angie) with a terminally ill mother and a family history of cancer who discovers that she has cancer in one breast but decides to have both breasts removed. “It was very deep, very hard-core,” said someone who read the script.

  Ironically, while Marcheline had put Mick Jagger into the deep freeze, Angie was feeling much warmer toward him. Jagger, not known for his largesse, had sent Angie a pair of $5,000 diamond earrings that he bought for her in New York. In May 1999, before her mother’s cancer was diagnosed, she was thinking of joining him in Brazil during the No Security tour. Her friends, not privy to this two-year samba of enticement and rejection, were astonished and alarmed. That same month he had fathered a child by his mistress, Brazilian model and TV host Luciana Gimenez—and yet Angie was going to Rio de Janeiro to meet with the singer. “I told her that she was out of her fucking mind to have anything to do with him,” recalls a close friend. “She didn’t take a blind bit of notice. It was all part of her great adventure.”