Name at birth: Angelina Jolie Voight
Angelina Jolie became an international movie star as the liveaction version of the video game heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2001) and Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (2003). Jolie first made a splash in 1998, playing doomed model Gia Marie Carangi in the HBO movie Gia. She played the love interest in Pushing Tin (1999, with John Cusack), and a rookie cop in The Bone Collector (1999, with Denzel Washington), but it was winning an Oscar for her supporting role in the 1999 Winona Ryder film Girl, Interrupted that made her a bigtime movie star. Jolie's plushlipped, brooding Gothic presence (and tattoos) made her a hit with the younger generation especially, and her wildlife offscreen antics made her a hit with the tabloids, especially while she was married to her Pushing Tin costar, Billy Bob Thornton (20002003). Since achieving Alist stardom, Jolie has become famous for her charitable impulses: she was named a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees in 2001. She adopted a Cambodian boy, Maddox, in 2002, and a daughter born in Ethiopia, Zahara, in 2005. She and Brad Pitt starred in the action film Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 2005, but whatever excitement the movie generated was overshadowed by the reallife drama of Pitt leaving Jennifer Aniston to move in with Jolie. In 2006 Jolie legally changed the names of her children to Maddox and Zahara JoliePitt. Jolie's first child with Pitt, a daughter named Shiloh Nouvel JoliePitt, was born on 27 May 2006 at a resort in Namibia.
Extra credit: Jolie is the daughter of Jon Voight, who won a best actor Oscar for the 1978 movie Coming Home (the same movie for which Jane Fonda won best actress)... Jolie played Cornelia Wallace, wife to Alabama governor George Wallace, in the 1997 TV movie George Wallace... On 31 July 2005 a royal decree was signed by King Norodom Sihamoni approving Jolie for Cambodian citizenship.