Born in Los Angeles, California, on this day in 1975, is the Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie (Voight).
Angelina’s father, actor Jon Voight, received a nomination for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and went on to win the award for Coming Home (1978). Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, was also in the acting business, but the couple divorced when Angelina was just a baby. In her early years, Jolie dabbled in modeling and shared the screen with her father in the 1982 movie Lookin’ to Get Out. She subsequently pursued acting studies at the renowned Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and New York University.
After a minor role in Cyborg 2 (1993), Jolie secured a more substantial role in the well-known film Hackers (1995), which featured British actor Jonny Lee Miller alongside her. Jolie married Miller that same year, although they separated in 1997 and eventually divorced.
Following a series of lackluster films, Jolie was nominated for an Emmy and received a Golden Globe for her portrayal of the Alabama governor’s segregationist wife in the television movie George Wallace. The next year, she earned another Emmy nomination for her dramatic performance as the troubled bisexual model Gia Carangi in the biopic Gia.
Jolie’s rising star captivated Hollywood, leading her to significant roles in major films such as Playing By Heart (1998), Pushing Tin (1999), and The Bone Collector (1999).
Her breakthrough role as the captivating sociopath Lisa in Girl, Interrupted propelled her into A-list status in Hollywood 
. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this performance, famously creating a sensation when she kissed her older brother, James Haven, at the 2000 Oscars. That same May, Jolie again made headlines by marrying her much older co-star, Billy Bob Thornton, in a quick ceremony in Las Vegas.
Later in 2000, Jolie featured in the action-packed hit Gone in Sixty Seconds as well as the thriller Original Sin. During a brief reconciliation with her father, they appeared together in the blockbuster action film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), in which Jolie executed many of her own stunts. Although Tomb Raider received poor reviews, it and its 2003 sequel became massive box-office successes, while the romantic comedy-drama Life or Something Like It (2002) did not fare as well.
Media coverage vividly captured the eccentric nature of Jolie and Thornton’s relationship, including their habit of wearing vials of each other’s blood as jewelry. Nevertheless, by mid-2002, Jolie had filed for divorce. By this point, she had also been named a goodwill ambassador by the United Nations, having embarked on goodwill missions while preparing for her role as an aid worker in the 2003 film Beyond Borders. Additionally, she adopted her son Maddox from Cambodia.
In April 2004, filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith commenced, starring Jolie alongside Brad Pitt as a married couple who are covertly assassins. Speculation about their off-screen romance started circulating, intensifying after Pitt’s separation from his wife, Jennifer Aniston, in January 2005. Two months after his divorce from Aniston was finalized, Pitt sought to adopt Maddox and Jolie’s daughter Zahara, who was adopted in June 2005 from Ethiopia.
In January 2006, while visiting the Dominican Republic, the now-official couple—referred to as “Brangelina” by the media—revealed that Jolie was expecting. Their daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, was born that May in Namibia. Jolie also adopted Pax Thien from a Vietnam orphanage in March 2007 and welcomed twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, in July 2008 in France.
Although her acting career often seemed overshadowed by her adventurous lifestyle and growing family (as well as her romance with the equally popular Pitt), Jolie consistently worked in film, notably in the spy drama The Good Shepherd (2006) and A Mighty Heart (2007), portraying Mariane Pearl, the wife of a Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. In 2008, she starred in the summer blockbuster Wanted along with the crime drama Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood.
Happy Birthday Angelina.
by Helena Bryanlith
