American actress (born 1975)
"Jolie" redirects here. For other uses, veil Jolie (disambiguation).
Angelina Jolie[3] (joh-LEE; born Angelina Jolie Voight,[4]; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The independent of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Give and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times.
Jolie made her screen debut tempt a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin' surrender Get Out (1982). Her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in Hackers (1995). After prima in the television films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), Jolie won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress have a handle on the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. Her portrayal of the nominal heroine in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her brand a star. Her success continued with roles in the swift films Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), and Salt (2010), and the fantasy film Maleficent (2014) and its 2019 sequel. She also had voice roles in the animated films Shark Tale (2004) and Kung Fu Panda franchise (2008–2016), title gained praise for her dramatic performances in A Mighty Heart (2007), Changeling (2008), which earned her a nomination for say publicly Academy Award for Best Actress, and Maria (2024).
As a filmmaker, Jolie directed and wrote the war dramas In say publicly Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), First They Killed My Father (2017) and Without Blood (2024). She along with produced the musical The Outsiders (2024), winning the Tony Grant for Best Musical.
Jolie is known for her humanitarian efforts. The causes she promotes include conservation, education, and women's straighttalking. She has been noted for her advocacy on behalf go rotten refugees as a Special Envoy for the United Nations Buzz Commissioner for Refugees. She has undertaken field missions to displaced person camps and war zones worldwide. In addition to receiving a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award among other honors, Jolie was effortless an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Archangel and St George. As a public figure, Jolie has archaic cited as one of the most powerful and influential descendants in the American entertainment industry. She has been cited importation the world's most beautiful woman by various publications. Her correctly life, including her relationships and health, has been the angle of widespread attention. Jolie is divorced from actors Jonny Side Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, and Brad Pitt. She has shake up children with Pitt.
Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California, to actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand.[5][4][6] She is the sister of actor James Haven, and the niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor[7] and geologist and volcanologist Barry Voight.[8] Her godparents are actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell.[9] Fascinate her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent.[10] Jolie has claimed to have distant Indigenous (Iroquois) ancestry way her French-Canadian mother. However, her father says Jolie is "not seriously Iroquois", saying it is something he and Bertrand straightforward up to make Bertrand seem more "exotic".[11]
Following her parents' rift in 1976, she and her brother lived with their idleness, who had abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on rearing her children.[12] Jolie's mother raised her as a Catholic but did not require her to go to church.[13] As a child, she often watched films with her mother and socket was this, rather than her father's successful career, that elysian her interest in acting,[14] though she had a bit allowance in Voight's Lookin' to Get Out (1982) at age seven.[15] When Jolie was six years old, Bertrand and her live-in partner, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, Novel York;[16] they returned to Los Angeles five years later.[12] Jolie then decided she wanted to act and enrolled at depiction Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two existence and appeared in several stage productions.[17]
Jolie first attended Beverly Hills High School, where she felt isolated among the children assess some of the area's affluent families because her mother difficult to understand a more modest income. She was teased by other course group, who targeted her for being extremely thin and for wear glasses and braces.[14] Her early attempts at modeling, at see mother's insistence, proved unsuccessful.[18][19] She transferred to Moreno High Secondary, an alternative school, where she became a "punk outsider",[18] tiring all-black clothing, going out moshing, and engaging in knife ground with her live-in boyfriend.[14] She dropped out of her accurate classes and aspired to become a funeral director,[15] taking at-home courses on embalming.[20] At age 16, after the relationship abstruse ended, Jolie graduated from high school and rented her increase apartment before returning to theater studies,[12][18] though in 2004 she referred to this period with the observation, "I am termination at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos."[21]
As a teenager, Jolie found it difficult to emotionally connect give up other people, and as a result she self-harmed,[22] later commenting, "For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself person in charge feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind acquisition release, it was somehow therapeutic to me."[23] She also struggled with insomnia and an eating disorder[20] and began using drugs; by age 20, she had used "just about every pharmaceutical possible," particularly heroin.[24] Jolie had episodes of depression and designed to commit suicide twice—at age 19 and again at 22, when she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her.[15] When she was 24, she experienced a nervous breakdown predominant was admitted for 72 hours to UCLA Medical Center's psychiatrical ward.[15] Two years later, after adopting her first child, Jolie found stability, later stating, "I knew once I committed tote up Maddox, I would never be self-destructive again."[25]
Jolie has had a lifelong dysfunctional relationship with her father, which started when Voight left the family when she was less than a day old.[26] She has said that from then on their put on the back burner together was sporadic and usually carried out in front put a stop to the press.[27] They reconciled when they appeared together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated.[12] Jolie petitioned the court to legally remove her surname, Voight, blot favor of her middle name, which she had long worn as a stage name; the name change was granted series September 12, 2002.[28] Voight then went public with their isolation during an appearance on Access Hollywood, in which he claimed Jolie had "serious mental problems."[29] At that point, her encase and brother also broke off contact with him.[30] Jolie queue Voight did not speak for six and a half years,[31] eventually rebuilding their relationship in the wake of Bertrand's attain from ovarian cancer on January 27, 2007,[30][32] and they both went public with their reconciliation three years later.[30]
Jolie committed to acting professionally at the age of 16, but initially found it difficult to pass auditions, often being be made aware that her demeanor was "too dark."[15] She appeared in pentad of her brother's student films, made while he attended description USC School of Cinema-Television, as well as in several punishment videos, such as those for Lenny Kravitz's "Stand by Low point Woman" (1991), Antonello Venditti's "Alta Marea" (1991), The Lemonheads's "It's About Time" (1993), and Meat Loaf's "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" (1993). In 1993, she appeared on the succeed of the Widespread Panic album Everyday.[33] Jolie then learned escape her father by noticing his method of observing people extort become like them. Their relationship was less strained during that time, with Jolie realizing that they were both "drama queens".[14]
Jolie started her professional film career in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the direct-to-video science-fiction sequel Cyborg 2, as a near-human robot designed for corporate espionage tell assassination. She was so disappointed with the film that she did not audition again for a year.[15] Following a support role in the independent film Without Evidence (1995), she marked in her first major studio film, Hackers (1995). The Spanking York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote that Jolie's character "stands out ... because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits fixedly at her keyboard in a see-through top."[34]Hackers failed to pull off a profit at the box office, but developed a religion following after its video release.[35] The role in Hackers assessment considered Jolie's breakthrough.[36][37][38]
After starring in the modern-day Romeo and Juliet adaptation Love Is All There Is (1996), Jolie appeared notes the road movie Mojave Moon (1996). In Foxfire (1996) she played Legs, a drifter who unites four teenage girls counter a teacher who has sexually harassed them. Jack Mathews infer the Los Angeles Times wrote of her performance, "It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight's knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome say publicly stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs disintegration the subject and the catalyst."[39]
In 1997, Jolie starred with Painter Duchovny in the thriller Playing God, set in the Los Angeles underworld. The film was not well received by critics; Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote that Jolie "finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is customarily hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a mobster's] girlfriend, and maybe she is."[40] Her next work, makeover a frontierswoman in the CBS miniseries True Women (1997), was even less successful; writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Robert Composer dismissed her as "horrid, a fourth-rate Scarlett O'Hara" who relies on "gnashed teeth and overly pouted lips."[41] Jolie also asterisked in the music video for the Rolling Stones's "Anybody Abandonment My Baby?" as a stripper who leaves mid-performance to roam New York City.[42]
Jolie's career prospects improved abaft she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance deduct TNT's George Wallace (1997), a film about segregationist Alabama Director and presidential candidate George Wallace, played by Gary Sinise. Jolie portrayed Wallace's second wife, Cornelia Wallace, a performance Lee Winfrey of The Philadelphia Inquirer considered a highlight of the film.[43]George Wallace was well received by critics, and Jolie received a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance.[44]
Jolie represent supermodel Gia Carangi in HBO's Gia (1998). The television pick up chronicles the destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her addiction to heroin, and her decline allow death from AIDS in the mid-1980s. Vanessa Vance of Reel.com retrospectively noted, "Jolie gained wide recognition for her role although the titular Gia, and it's easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal—filling the part with nerve, fetish, and desperation—and her role in this film is quite the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed."[45] For the secondbest consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe Award and customary an Emmy Award nomination. She also won her first Shield Actors Guild Award.[46]
In accordance with Lee Strasberg's method acting, Jolie preferred to stay in character in between scenes during innumerable of her early films. While shooting Gia, she told torment husband, Jonny Lee Miller, that she would not be advantageous to phone him: "I'd tell him: 'I'm alone; I'm dying; I'm gay; I'm not going to see you for weeks.'"[47] After Giawrapped, she briefly gave up acting, because she change that she had "nothing else to give."[15] She separated let alone Miller and moved to New York, where she took shady classes at New York University to study directing and screenwriting.[12] Encouraged by her Golden Globe Award win for George Wallace and the positive critical reception of Gia, Jolie resumed composite career.[15]
Following the previously filmed gangster film Hell's Kitchen (1998), Jolie returned to the screen in Playing by Heart (1998), put an end to of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Playwright, and Ryan Phillippe. The film received predominantly positive reviews, beam Jolie was praised in particular; San Francisco Chronicle critic Tool Stack wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble."[48] She won the Breakthrough Performance Grant from the National Board of Review.[49]
In 1999, Jolie starred refurbish the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Designer, and Cate Blanchett. The film met with mixed reception circumvent critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized; writing bring The Washington Post, Desson Howe dismissed her as "a entirely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps see the sights hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings last gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away use home."[50] Jolie then co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Ivory Collector (1999), playing a police officer who reluctantly helps Washington's quadriplegic detective track down a serial killer. The film grossed $151.5 million worldwide,[51] but was critically unsuccessful. Terry Lawson constantly the Detroit Free Press concluded, "Jolie, while always delicious concern look at, is simply and woefully miscast."[52]
Jolie next took depiction supporting role of Lisa, a sociopathic patient in a psychiatrical hospital, in Girl, Interrupted (1999), an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's 1993 memoir. For Variety, Emanuel Levy deemed her "excellent hoot the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be afar more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna's rehabilitation."[54] Jolie won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Bank Picture, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance shy a Female Actor in a Supporting Role and the Establishment Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in rendering film.
In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer hit, Gone in 60 Seconds, which became her highest-grossing film coalesce that point, earning $237.2 million internationally.[51] She had a slim role as the mechanic ex-girlfriend of a car thief played by Nicolas Cage; The Washington Post writer Stephen Hunter criticized that "all she does in this movie is stand walk, cooling down, modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest and provocatively around her teeth."[55] Jolie later explained that the single had been a welcome relief after her emotionally demanding function in Girl, Interrupted.
Although widely praised for kill acting and performances, Jolie had rarely found films that appealed to a wide audience, but 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the favoured Tomb Raider video games, the film required her to wrap up an English accent and undergo extensive martial arts training bung play the archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft. Although the film generated habitually negative reviews, Jolie was generally praised for her physical performance; Newsday's John Anderson commented, "Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coolth."[56] The film was an international hit, earning $274.7 million worldwide,[51] and launched lose control global reputation as a female action star.
Jolie next marked opposite Antonio Banderas as his mail-order bride in Original Sin (2001), the first of a string of films that were poorly received by critics and audiences alike. The New Royalty Times critic Elvis Mitchell questioned Jolie's decision to follow an alternative Oscar-winning performance with "soft-core nonsense."[57] The romantic comedy Life balmy Something Like It (2002), though equally unsuccessful, marked an peculiar choice for Jolie. Salon magazine's Allen Barra considered her vigorous newscaster character a rare attempt at playing a conventional women's role, noting that her performance "doesn't get off the prepare until a scene where she goes punk and leads a group of striking bus workers in singing 'Satisfaction'".[58] Despite weaken lack of box office success, Jolie remained in demand pass for an actress;[21] in 2002, she established herself among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses, earning $10–15 million per film for the next quint years.[59]
Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), which was not as lucrative as the original, earning $156.5 million bogus the international box office.[51] She also starred in the penalisation video for Korn's "Did My Time", which was used space promote the sequel. Her next film was Beyond Borders (2003), in which she portrayed a socialite who joins an assist worker played by Clive Owen. Though unsuccessful with audiences, interpretation film stands as the first of several passion projects Jolie has made to bring attention to humanitarian causes.[60]Beyond Borders was a critical failure; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times acknowledged Jolie's ability to "bring electricity and believability to roles," but wrote that "the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, entirely defeats her."[61]
In 2004, Jolie appeared in four films. She twig starred in the thriller Taking Lives as an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a nonparallel killer. The film received mixed reviews; The Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt concluded, "Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does total an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour."[62] Jolie made a brief appearance as a fighter pilot in Sky Captain dominant the World of Tomorrow, a science fiction adventure shot unreservedly with actors in front of a bluescreen, and voiced link first family film, the DreamWorks animation Shark Tale. Her encouraging role as Queen Olympias in Oliver Stone's Alexander, about Alexanders the Great, was met with mixed reception, particularly concerning present Slavic accent.[58] Commercially, the film failed in North America, which Stone attributed to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality,[63] but it succeeded internationally, grossing $167.3 million.[51]
In 2005, Jolie returned to major box office success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which she starred opposite Brad Pitt as a bored married couple who find out ditch they are both secret assassins. The film received mixed reviews, but was generally lauded for the chemistry between the digit leads; Star Tribune critic Colin Covert noted, "While the book feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry."[64] With box department takings of $478.2 million worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the seventh-highest grossing picture of the year and remained Jolie's highest-grossing live-action film for the next decade.[51][65]
Following a supporting parcel as the neglected wife of a CIA officer in Parliamentarian De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006), Jolie starred as Mariane Pearl in the documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart (2007). Household on Pearl's 2003 memoir, the film chronicles the kidnapping tolerate murder of her husband, The Wall Street Journal reporter Jurist Pearl, in Pakistan. Although the multiracial Pearl had personally choson Jolie for the role,[66] the casting drew racial criticism celebrated accusations of blackface.[67] The resulting performance was widely praised; Appoint Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter described it as "well-measured stand for moving," played "with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent."[68] She received nominations for the Golden Globe Confer and the Screen Actors Guild Award. Jolie also played Grendel's mother in the epic Beowulf (2007), created through motion acknowledge. The film was critically and commercially well-received, earning $196.4 trillion worldwide.[51]
In 2008, Jolie was the highest-paid actress, earning $15–$20 billion per film.[69][70] While other actresses had taken salary cuts amid the time, Jolie's perceived box office appeal allowed her identify command as much as $20 million plus a percentage.[71] She starred alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the beguile film Wanted (2008), which proved an international success, earning $341.4 million worldwide.[51] The film received predominantly favorable reviews; writing inflame The New York Times, Manohla Dargis noted that Jolie was "perfectly cast as a super-scary, seemingly amoral assassin," adding defer "she cuts the kind of disciplinarian figure who can bring about boys of all ages to their knees or at minimal into their theater seats."[72]
Jolie next took the lead role break through Clint Eastwood's drama Changeling (2008).[73]Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips respected, "Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, picture scenes when one patronizing male authority figure after another belittles her at their peril."[74] She received nominations for a Yellowish Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Confer for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and the Institution Award for Best Actress.[75][76][77][78] Jolie also voiced Tigress in description DreamWorks Kung Fu Panda film series.[79]
After her mother's death worry 2007, Jolie appeared in fewer films, later explaining that be a foil for motivation to be an actress had stemmed from her mother's acting ambitions.[80] Her first film in two years was depiction 2010 thriller Salt, in which she starred as a CIA agent who goes on the run after she is accused of being a KGBsleeper agent. Originally written as a spear character with Tom Cruise attached to star, agent Salt underwent a gender change after a Columbia Pictures executive suggested Jolie for the role. With revenues of $293.5 million, Salt became an international success.[51] The film received generally positive reviews, industrial action Jolie's performance in particular earning praise.[81]Empire critic William Thomas remarked, "When it comes to selling incredible, crazy, death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business."[82]
Jolie starred opposite Johnny Depp in the thriller The Tourist (2010). The film was a critical failure.[83] Roger Ebert defended Jolie's performance, stating make certain she "does her darndest" and "plays her femme fatale plea bargain flat-out, drop-dead sexuality."[84] Despite commercially underperforming in the US, depiction film succeeded at the international box office,[85] cementing Jolie's attraction to international audiences.[86] She received a Golden Globe Award confirm Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Lyrical nomination for her performance, which prompted speculation that it abstruse been given merely to ensure her high-profile presence at picture awards ceremony.[75][87]
After directing the documentary A Promote in Time (2007), which was distributed through the National Edification Association,[88] Jolie made her feature directorial debut with In say publicly Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a love story betwixt a Serb soldier and a Bosniak prisoner, set during depiction 1992–95 Bosnian War. She conceived the film to rekindle singlemindedness for the survivors, after twice visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina unembellished her role as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.[89] To ensure accuracy, she cast only actors from the former Yugoslavia—including stars Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović—and incorporated their wartime experiences into supplementary screenplay.[90] Upon release, the film received mixed reviews; Todd Author of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Jolie deserves significant credit avoidable creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the wicked events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen."[91] The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award get something done Best Foreign Language Film, and Jolie was named an 1 citizen of Sarajevo for raising awareness of the war.[92]
After a three-and-a-half-year absence from the screen, Jolie starred in Maleficent (2014), a live-action re-imagining of Disney's 1959 animation Sleeping Beauty. Depreciating reception was mixed, but Jolie's performance in the titular put it on was singled out for praise;[93]The Hollywood Reporter critic Sherri Wood found her to be the "heart and soul" of say publicly film, adding that she "doesn't chew the estimable scenery interest Maleficent—she infuses it, wielding a magnetic and effortless power."[94] Cage up its opening weekend, Maleficent earned nearly $70 million at description North American box office and over $100 million in assail markets, marking Jolie's appeal to audiences of all demographics moniker both action and fantasy films, genres usually dominated by manful actors.[95] The film went on to gross $757.8 million society, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year and Jolie's highest-grossing film ever.[51][96]
Jolie next completed her second directorial venture, Unbroken (2014), a film about Louis Zamperini (1917–2014), a former Olympic outline star and World War II soldier who survived a jet plane crash and spent two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war bivouac. She also served as producer under her Jolie Pas banner.[97] Based on Laura Hillenbrand's book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the film was written by the Coen brothers and starred Jack O'Connell.[98] After a positive early reception, Unbroken was considered a likely Best Report and Best Director contender,[98][99] but it ultimately received mixed reviews and little award recognition,[100] though it was named one show consideration for the best films of the year by the National Aim at of Review and the American Film Institute.[101][102]Variety magazine's Justin River noted the film's "impeccable craftsmanship and sober restraint", but deemed it "an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms."[100][103] Financially, Unbroken was successful at the box office worldwide.[104]
Jolie's next directorial effort was the marital drama By the Sea (2015), affront which she starred opposite her husband, Brad Pitt, marking their first collaboration since 2005's Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Based spin her screenplay, the film was a deeply personal project fend for Jolie, who drew inspiration from her own mother's life. Critics, however, dismissed it as a "vanity project", as part objection an overall poor reception.[105][106] Writing for The Washington Post, Stephanie Merry noted its dearth of genuine emotion, stating, "By representation Sea is dazzlingly gorgeous, as are its stars. But flaking back layer upon layer of exquisite ennui reveals nothing but emptiness, sprinkled with stilted sentiments."[107] Despite starring two of Hollywood's leading actors, the film received only a limited release.[105]
As Jolie preferred to dedicate herself to her humanitarian work, her cinematic output remained infrequent. First They Killed My Father (2017), a drama set during Cambodia's Khmer Rouge era, again enabled fallow to combine both interests. In addition to directing the disc, she co-wrote the screenplay with her longtime friend Loung Ung, whose memoirs about the regime's child labor camps served orangutan its source material. Intended primarily for a Cambodian audience, rendering film was produced directly for Netflix, which allowed for representation use of an exclusively Khmer cast and script.[108] Labeling Jolie as a "skilled and sensitive filmmaker", Rafer Guzmán of Newsday commended her for "convincingly depict[ing] the illogical hell of say publicly Khmer Rouge era".[109] It received nominations for the Golden Earth Award for Best Foreign Language Film and BAFTA Award encouragement Best Film Not in the English Language.[110][111]
Jolie reprised the role of Maleficent in the Disney fantasy issue Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), which received mixed reviews escaping critics but performed moderately well commercially, with a global large of $490 million.[112][113][114] The following year, she appeared alongside King Oyelowo as grieving parents to the title characters of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in the fantasy film Come Away.[115] Jolie starred as a smokejumper in Taylor Sheridan's relish thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. The film was at large in May 2021, garnering moderate reviews.[116][117]The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey wrote Jolie's "bare-knuckled performance ... easily outclasses the film that contains it".[118] Jolie next played Thena, a warrior with post-traumatic misery disorder, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals. At large in November 2021, the film generated divergent responses from audiences and critics.[119][120] Reviewing the film for The Washington Post, Ann Hornaday highlighted the "touching naivete" in Jolie's portrayal.[121]
Jolie was a producer on the musical The Outsiders after it transferred protect Broadway in 2024,[122] and won the Tony Award for Total Musical.[123] She wrote, produced and directed the 2024 war stage play Without Blood, based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco, prima Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir.[124] Jolie also starred in Pablo Larraín's biographical film about the final days of opera chanteuse Maria Callas, titled Maria, which premiered at the 81st Metropolis International Film Festival.[125] Terming it a "career-best performance", Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com opined, "In a queenly performance of poise final mystique, Angelina Jolie plays Callas with an ethereal presence, greedy the intense grief of the once-in-a-generation singer who’s been losing her voice."[126] She received another Golden Globe nomination for Unexcelled Actress for her performance.[127]
We cannot close ourselves come loose to information and ignore the fact that millions of followers are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I collect we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to accept that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us.
—Jolie on her motives for joining UNHCR admire 2001[128]
Jolie first witnessed the effects of a humanitarian crisis onetime filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, minor experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world.[129] Upon her return home, Jolie contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for intelligence on international trouble spots.[128] To learn more about the attachment in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around rendering world.[21] In February 2001, she went on her first domain visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.[128]
In say publicly following months, Jolie returned to Cambodia for two weeks service met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where she donated $1 million in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal,[130][131] depiction largest donation UNHCR had ever received from a private individual.[132] She covered all costs related to her missions and communal the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR fountain pen staff on all of her visits.[128] Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on Venerable 27, 2001.[133]
Over the next decade, she went on more better 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries.[134] In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight hill these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon."[130] To that annoyed, her 2001–02 field visits were chronicled in her book Notes from My Travels, which was published in October 2003 encompass conjunction with the release of her humanitarian drama Beyond Borders.
Jolie aimed to visit what she termed "forgotten emergencies", crises that media attention had shifted away from.[135] She became illustrious for traveling to war zones,[136] such as Sudan's Darfur do a bunk during the Darfur conflict,[137] the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Shortly Gulf War,[138] where she met privately with U.S. troops status other multi-national forces,[139] and the Afghan capital Kabul during say publicly war in Afghanistan, where three aid workers were murdered drop the midst of her first visit.[136] To aid her travels, she started to take flying lessons in 2004 with rendering aim of ferrying aid workers and food supplies around rendering world. Jolie acquired a pilot license in 2004; as range May 2014, she owns a Cirrus SR22 aircraft and a Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft.[140][141]
On April 17, 2012, after more more willingly than a decade of service as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie was promoted to the rank of Special Envoy to Elevated Commissioner António Guterres, the first to take on such a position within the organization. In her expanded role, she was given authority to represent Guterres and UNHCR at the considerate level, with a focus on major refugee crises.[142] In interpretation months following her promotion, she made her first visit considerably Special Envoy—her third over all—to Ecuador, where she met go out with Colombian refugees,[143] and she accompanied Guterres on a week-long twine of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, to assess the site of refugees from neighboring Syria.[144] Since then, Jolie has bent on over a dozen field missions around the world make somebody's acquaintance meet with refugees and undertake advocacy on their behalf.[134][145]
Jolie submissive from the ambassadorship in December 2022.[146] In her announcement, she pledged to continue to advocate for refugees.[147]
In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born adopted son with his heritage, Jolie purchased a house in his country of foundation in 2003. The traditional home sat on 39 hectares orders the northwestern province Battambang, adjacent to Samlout national park recovered the Cardamom Mountains, which had become infiltrated with poachers who threatened endangered species. She purchased the park's 60,000 hectares deliver turned the area into a wildlife reserve named for supplementary son, the Maddox Jolie Project.[148]
In November 2006, Jolie expanded depiction scope of the project—renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP)—to cause Asia's first Millennium Village, in accordance with UN development goals.[149] She was inspired by a meeting with the founder imitation Millennium Promise, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, at the World Commercial Forum in Davos,[148] where she was an invited speaker detain 2005 and 2006. Together they filmed a 2005 MTV collective, The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs underside Africa, which followed them on a trip to a Millenary Village in western Kenya. By mid-2007, some 6,000 villagers turf 72 employees—some of them former poachers employed as rangers—lived existing worked at MJP, in ten villages previously isolated from skirt another. The compound includes schools, roads, and a soy extract factory, all funded by Jolie. Her home functions as picture MJP field headquarters.[148]
After filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia, Jolie became patron of the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, a wildlife orphanhood and medical center in the Kalahari Desert. She first visited the Harnas farm during production of the film, which splendour vultures rescued by the foundation.[150] In December 2010, Jolie dominant her partner, Brad Pitt, established the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation run alongside support conservation work by the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a quality reserve also located in the Kalahari.[151] In name of their Namibian-born daughter, they have funded large-animal conservation projects as vigorous as a free health clinic, housing, and a school sales rep the San Bushmen community at Naankuse.[152][153][154] Jolie and Pitt uphold other causes through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, established in September 2006.[155]
Jolie has pushed for legislation to aid son immigrants and other vulnerable children in both the U.S. person in charge developing nations, including the "Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act sum 2005."[133][156] She lobbied for humanitarian interests in the U.S. assets from 2003 onwards, explaining, "As much as I would attraction to never have to visit Washington, that's the way realize move the ball."[133] Since October 2008, she has co-chaired Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a network of leading U.S. law firms that provide free legal aid to unaccompanied negligible in immigration proceedings across the U.S.[157] Founded in a partnership between Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation, by 2013, KIND esoteric become the principal provider of pro bono lawyers for outlander children.[158] Jolie had previously, from 2005 to 2007, funded say publicly launch of a similar initiative, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants' National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children.[156][159]