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Angelina Jolie
2015 Icon
Actor
b. June 4, 1975
“I always play women I would date.”
Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actor whose films include “Girl, Interrupted,” “Changeling” and “Maleficent.” She is among the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, having cemented her international success portraying such perse characters as a video game heroine in the “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” franchise and an HIV-positive supermodel in “Gia.” She made her directorial debut with the “Land of Blood and Honey,” a drama set during the Bosnian war. She also wrote and produced the film.
Jolie’s role in the 2003 film “Beyond Borders,” reflects her personal interest in humanitarian work. She made the largest-ever private donation to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2001. She has since spent her own money and time visiting war-torn communities and bringing attention to international trouble spots.
Jolie has served as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador for over a decade and was promoted to the rank of special envoy in 2012. She has been involved in dozens of field missions around the world, meeting with refugees and advocating on their behalf.
Jolie also lobbies against violence and poverty under the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, an umbrella organization she and her husband, Brad Pitt, founded in 2006. In 2003 she became the first person to be honored with the Citizen of the World Award from the United Nations Correspondents Association.
In 1996 Jolie had a relationship with the lesbian model and actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of “Foxfire.” Jolie said, “I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my husband.”
In 2003, when Jolie was asked if she was bisexual, she responded, “Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it’s okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!”
Jolie and Pitt have six children.