Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography

by Andrew Morton

  In her first starring role in the sci-fi drama Cyborg 2, Angie, then seventeen, was trained in martial arts by Karen Sheperd, who played an evil mutant. When she first met her, Karen thought Angie was too skinny and weak for the part, believing that “Hollywood nepotism” had triumphed over talent. By the end of the shoot she admired Angie for her quiet ambition and raw ability. Karen Sheperd

  When Angie first met Calvin Klein model Jenny Shimizu at an audition for Foxfire, she was attracted to her but feared that they were earmarked for the same role. Angie relaxed when she realized Jenny was there for another part. The two became lovers and eventually good friends. Sipa Press/Rex Features

  Angie first met English actor Jonny Lee Miller during the making of the high-tech thriller Hackers in the fall of 1994. Both highly competitive, with a mutual love of tattoos, the couple enjoyed a long-distance romance, eventually marrying in an intimate ceremony, with actor Jude Law and Marcheline Bertrand as witnesses, on March 28, 1996. In honor of the occasion Angie wrote his name in her blood on the back of her white wedding shirt. Sven Arnstein/StayStill/Photoshot

  Within months of her marriage, Angie began an affair with Timothy Hutton, her costar in Playing God. “He was besotted with her. Besotted,” remembers director Andy Wilson. Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage/Getty Images

  Angie relaxes with other members of the cast between takes on the set of Playing God. Director Andy Wilson, far right, recalls: “She was only twenty-one but sexy as all hell.” Andy Wilson

  Emotionally exhausted and depressed after filming Gia, Angie learned to play the drums in order to relax and in hopes of playing in Tim Hutton’s garage band. She was taught by Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington, who believes the exhilarating exercise helped save her life. Courtesy of Joey Covington

  Bleary-eyed and out of sorts, Angie, who cut her hand during the filming of Hell’s Kitchen in 1997, meets her drug dealer Franklin Meyer for the first time at his apartment in the infamous Chelsea Hotel. She was accompanied by actor Johnny Whitworth, but there is no suggestion that he was buying or using drugs. After that first conversation, she left with sixty dollars’ worth of heroin and cocaine. “She never bought or did a lot,” Meyer recalls. Franklin Meyer

  Angie talking to her father from her new apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. She let herself be filmed by Franklin Meyer for a grungy documentary he called Hand Job Files. Franklin Meyer

  With her unruly mane of golden hair covering her face, this is an unusual shot of Angie framing her famous lips. Her dealer Franklin Meyer, who took the shot, discussed setting up an artists’ colony in upstate New York with the actress, who wanted to learn how to make masks and casts, particularly of women’s breasts. Franklin Meyer

  Angie sent this striking Polaroid shot of herself in a cowboy hat and a wide-brimmed smile to her father as a Christmas card. It was a light-hearted moment during a photo shoot when she was having the name of her lover and future husband, Billy Bob Thornton, tattooed way below her bikini line. Author's collection

  Angie was a regular visitor to Franklin Meyer’s salon in the Chelsea Hotel. Here, her hair cropped short for Gia, she poses with a necklace of gold leaf and glass, which a record company executive traded for drugs. Franklin Meyer

  Angie in 1998 at the Golden Globes, where she won her first-ever award, for her performance in George Wallace. During the course of the evening she shared a shower with Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio, but he didn’t float her boat. While she gained a trophy, she managed to lose a pair of diamond earrings that had been loaned to her. Peter C. Borsari

  While Angie was “married but dating,” Jonny Lee Miller was regularly by her side. Even after they separated and divorced, the couple remained great friends. He was with her when she won the Golden Globe in January 1999 for her performance in Gia. Jim Smeal/WireImage/Getty Images

  Before she won her Golden Globe for Gia, Angie promised to jump in the hotel pool afterward. She was as good as her word, after changing out of her silver Randolph Duke gown into a body suit. She was joined by her manager, Geyer Kosinski, Jonny Lee Miller, and James Haven. Then she pulled TV producer Jeremy Louwerse into the pool, where he managed to conduct an interview while chest-deep in water. Chuck Ozeas

  After weeks of nagging, tattoo artist Friday Jones finally agreed to Angie’s request to have the name of her lover, Billy Bob Thornton, tattooed beneath her bikini line. Friday thought she would live to regret it. During the session, on October 6, 1999, an amateur photographer friend took a series of erotic Polaroids, the actress lying back languidly or indulging in mild bondage with tape as her tattoo artist worked. Angie says: “Usually all my tattoos came at a good time. A tattoo is something permanent, when you’ve made a self-discovery or something you’ve come to a conclusion about.” Author's collection

  When Angie won an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted in March 2000, it was her swooping, open-mouthed kiss with her brother that had the Hollywood crowd gasping for breath. While talk of incest was in the air, James Haven knew that his sister was wildly in love with Billy Bob Thornton, whom she saw later that night. Nonetheless, Haven, who was trying to kick-start an acting career, was forever tainted by that moment. Gary Boas/Retna Ltd./Corbis UK Ltd.

  “Hey, Angie, give us a little of that Billy Bob action,” yelled photographers as the actor and his bride of four weeks smooched their way down the red carpet for the premiere of Gone in Sixty Seconds in June 2000. The couple gained instant notoriety not only for their revelations about their wild sex life but for wearing his-and-her blood vial necklaces. Frank Trapper/Corbis UK Ltd.

  Angelina and her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, in Santa Monica a couple of days after Angie's second marriage in May 2000. Within days, Angie was on her way to London, where she starred as adventuress Lara Croft. Every day, wherever she was in the world, Angie phoned her mother, who was also her manager until she became too ill to continue. Lucky Mat Corp./Getty Images

  Angie and her father at a press conference in 2001 to promote Lara Croft, in which Jon Voight played her father. It was a profound experience for both of them, though Angie complained later that he soon reverted back to his habit of being judgmental about her behavior. Angie displays a loving wariness toward her father, in contrast to her relaxed demeanor with her mother. All Action General/Press Association Images

  In Angie’s eyes, Maddox, the Cambodian orphan she adopted in 2002, was the one man in her life who never let her down. His arrival changed everything, the catalyst that ended her brief marriage to Billy Bob Thornton and the missing link in her life that imbued her with an inner calm she had never felt before. Author's collection

  In order to honor Maddox’s presence in her life, Angie flew to Bangkok for a tattoo engraved by tattoo master Sompong Kanphai. In July 2004 she had a second engraving on her back, a tattoo of a roaring dragon in celebration of being made an honorary citizen of Cambodia, Maddox’s homeland. AFP/Getty Images

  With his tongue out at photographers, Maddox seems to express how Angie feels inside. He was her surrogate, used to explain many of her actions and decisions. For example, before adopting Zahara, she said that Maddox had been “asking for an African brother or sister,” and she opened her heart to Brad Pitt only after Maddox, after giving him the once-over, called him “Dad.” Matt Cardy/Getty Images

  With three-year-old Maddox in her arms, Angie, as the UN Goodwill Ambassador for refugees, meets a patient at the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon on Christmas Day 2004. Her work for the UN was inspired by the poverty she witnessed in Cambodia during the filming of Lara Croft, as well as by a subsequent visit to Africa. Mahmoud Tawil/AFP/Getty Images

  Angie takes a break from filming the second Lara Croft movie to attend a mines clearance and awareness day in northern England in October 2002. The year before, she had been asked to detonate a landmine with dynamite during a UN-sponsored visit to Cambodia. “It was a great feeling to destroy something that would have otherwise hurt or possibly killed another per
son,” she said. Jim Duxbury/Rex Features

  Angie has always envied what she calls “the other girl,” the wholesome blonde, the good girl, the girl next door, feeling that she was very different from these women. So her pleasure at being accepted by an august body like the United Nations and meeting with world leaders such as Secretary of State Colin Powell was all the sweeter. Here she is about to speak at the launch of World Refugee Day in Washington, D.C., in June 2004. Mannie Garcia/Reuters/Corbis UK Ltd.

  Angie has earned wide respect not only for speaking out on difficult issues but also for putting her money where her mouth is, donating approximately a third of her income to deserving causes. At press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, in May 2005, she spoke passionately about the plight of Afghan refugees who had been forced to flee their homeland and were living in temporary camps in northern Pakistan. Anjum Naveed/Associated Press/Press Association Images

  During a six-day visit to Tanzania in April 2003, Angie joined with children, orphaned by the fighting in neighboring Congo, who were traveling to a refugee camp for around 85,000 people. Saddened and visibly upset by what she saw and heard, she found time to play a game with youngsters under the Right to Play program. Later she donated $50,000 to a local orphanage. Abandoned and orphaned children touch her heart, striking a chord with the alienation she often feels about herself and her place in the world. ABACA/Press Association Images

  The stance is awkward, the distance deliberate. Just two months after Brad Pitt announced his separation from Jennifer Aniston in January 2005, he and Angie, the woman believed to be the spoke in the marital wheel, appeared at a luncheon in Los Angeles to publicize Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the drama that first brought them together. They continued to give the impression that they were just good friends for some months afterward. WireImage/Getty Images

  Angie, pregnant with her first biological child, and Brad join the great and the good, including UN Secretary General Koft Annan, left, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2006. During their relationship the couple has been able to straddle the gap between tabloid tittle-tattle and high-minded public policy. Fabrice Caffrini/AFP/Getty Images

  Relaxed and intimate, Angie and Brad enjoy a quiet drink in a Prague restaurant in May 2007 during a break in filming for the thriller Wanted, in which she played an assassin training the son of a fellow assassin in the profession’s deadly arts. It was a break, too, from their growing family–and the ever-present paparazzi. David Altman/Getty Images

  A brand, a corporation, and a charity powerhouse, Brad and Angie are considered one of the most influential couples on the planet. Restless, competitive, and volatile, they endeavor to juggle a family of six children, film careers, and a smorgasbord of charitable works. At the London premiere of Beowulf in November 2007, their union is neatly captured by photographer Rune Hellestad. Rune Hellestad/Corbis UK Ltd.

  A star is born. Maddox shows off his sunglasses during a visit to Central Park, in New York City, while Angie shows off her second adopted child, Ethiopian-born Zahara, known as Zee. Each child has a nanny who speaks his or her native tongue, though inside Château Jolie-Pitt the lingua franca is French. James Devaney/WireImage/Getty Images

  Angie, out shopping with Shiloh and Zahara at a New York art shop, always wanted to adopt. She emulated dancer Josephine Baker, who famously had a rainbow family of twelve children who lived with her in a French château. Abaca USA Street/Press Association Images

  When she was younger, Angie complained about endlessly moving around to different apartments. Actually she lived most of her young life on the same street, whereas her nomadic tribe of six children is fortunate to spend a week in one place, the couple determined to take the children along as they frenetically jet from red carpet premiere to refugee camp and film shoot. Here they are at the Chiba airport in Japan in January 2009, taking what Brad calls “the platoon” home to Los Angeles. Masatoshi Okauchi/Rex Features

  When she was a teenage goth, Angie had a crush on Johnny Depp, who starred in the cult movie Edward Scissorhands, about a weird outsider with scissors for hands. In The Tourist, shot in Paris and Venice in the spring of 2010, Angie had the chance to play alongside her idol. These days Angie is very much an insider, though still intriguing. The pose is reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn, but Angelina Jolie is unmistakably herself. Lorenzo Santini/WireImage/Getty Images