Angelina Jolie: 90 things you didn’t know about the actress! (List)

1. Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California, to actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand.

2. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and has been cited as Hollywood’s highest-paid actress.

3. Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin’ to Get Out (1982).

4. She began acting at a young age, studying at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute while in her early teens.

5. Jolie later attended New York University.

6. Her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in a major film, Hackers (1995).

7. She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical television films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999).

8. Jolie’s starring role as the video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a leading Hollywood actress.

9. She continued her successful action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), and Salt (2010), and received critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

10. Beginning in the 2010s, she expanded her career into directing, screenwriting, and producing, starting with the wartime dramas In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) and Unbroken (2014).

11. Her biggest commercial success came with the fantasy picture Maleficent (2014).

12. In addition to her film career, Jolie is noted for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and an honorary damehood of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG), among other honors.

13. She promotes various causes, including conservation, education, and women’s rights, and is most noted for her advocacy on behalf of refugees as a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

14. As a public figure, Jolie has been cited as one of the most influential and powerful people in the American entertainment industry, as well as the world’s most beautiful woman, by various media outlets.

15. Her personal life is the subject of wide publicity.

16. Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, she has been married to actor Brad Pitt since 2014. They have six children together, three of whom were adopted internationally.

17. She is the sister of actor James Haven and niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor.

18. Her godparents are actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell.

19. Like her mother, Jolie has stated that she is part Iroquois, although her only known indigenous ancestors were 17th-century Hurons.

20. After her parents’ separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother lived with their mother, who had abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on raising her children.

21. As a child, she often watched films with her mother and it was this, rather than her father’s successful career, that inspired her interest in acting, though at age five she had a bit part in Voight’s Lookin’ to Get Out (1982).

22. Jolie first attended Beverly Hills High School, where she felt isolated among the children of some of the area’s affluent families, because her mother survived on a more modest income. She was teased by other students, who targeted her for being extremely thin and for wearing glasses and braces.

23. Her early attempts at modeling, at her mother’s insistence, proved unsuccessful.

24. She then transferred to Moreno High School, an alternative school, where she became a “punk outsider,” wearing all-black clothing, going out moshing, and experimenting with knife play with her live-in boyfriend.

25. At age 16, after the relationship had ended, Jolie graduated from high school and rented her own apartment, before returning to theater studies, though in 2004 she referred to this period with the observation, “I am still at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos.”

26. As a teenager, Jolie found it difficult to emotionally connect with other people, and as a result she self-harmed, later commenting, “For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.”

27. She also struggled with insomnia and an eating disorder, and began experimenting with drugs; by age 20, she had used “just about every drug possible,” particularly heroin.

28. Jolie suffered episodes of depression and twice planned to commit suicide—at age 19 and again at 22, when she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her.

29. When she was 24, she experienced a nervous breakdown and was admitted for 72 hours to UCLA Medical Center’s psychiatric ward.

30. Two years later, after adopting her first child, Jolie found stability in her life, later stating, “I knew once I committed to Maddox, I would never be self-destructive again.” They reconciled when they appeared together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated.

31. Jolie petitioned the court to legally remove her surname “Voight” in favor of her middle name, which she had long used as a stage name; the name change was granted on September 12, 2002. Voight then went public with their estrangement during an appearance on Access Hollywood, in which he claimed Jolie had “serious mental problems.” At that point, her mother and brother also broke off contact with Voight. They did not speak for six-and-a-half years, but began rebuilding their relationship in the wake of Bertrand’s death from ovarian cancer on January 27, 2007, before going public with their reconciliation three years later.

32. After Jolie joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June 2007, she hosted a symposium on international law and justice at CFR headquarters and funded several CFR special reports, including “Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities.”

33. In January 2011, she established the Jolie Legal Fellowship, a network of lawyers and attorneys who are sponsored to advocate the development of human rights in their countries. Its member attorneys, called Jolie Legal Fellows, have facilitated child protection efforts in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and promoted the development of an inclusive democratic process in Libya following the 2011 revolution.

34. Jolie has fronted a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones by the UK government, which made the issue a priority of its 2013 G8 presidency. In May 2012, she launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) with Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was inspired to campaign on the issue by her Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011).

35. In February 2015, Jolie and Hague launched the UK’s first academic Centre on Women, Peace and Security, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Centre aims to contribute to global women’s rights issues, including the prosecution of war rape and women’s engagement in politics, through academic research, a post-graduate teaching program, public engagement, and collaboration with international organizations.

36. Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In August 2002, she received the inaugural Humanitarian Award from the Church World Service’s Immigration and Refugee Program, and in October 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association.

37. She was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA in October 2005, and she received the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee in November 2007.

38. In October 2011, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres presented Jolie with a gold pin reserved for the most long-serving staff, in recognition of her decade as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.

39. In November 2013, Jolie received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Academy Award, from the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

40. In June 2014, she was appointed an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) for her services to the UK’s foreign policy and campaigning to end sexual violence in war zones.

41. Queen Elizabeth II presented Jolie with the insignia of her honorary damehood during a private ceremony the following October.

42. “Jolie” means “pretty” in French.

43. On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child,[169] seven-month-old Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia.

44. Jolie adopted a daughter, six-month-old Zahara Marley, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 6, 2005.

45. After Pitt announced his intention to adopt her children, she filed a petition to legally change their surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on January 19, 2006. Pitt adopted Maddox and Zahara soon after.

46. In an attempt to avoid the unprecedented media frenzy surrounding their relationship, Jolie and Pitt traveled to Namibia for the birth of their first biological child. On May 27, 2006, she gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund.

47. They sold the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images with the aim of benefiting charity, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these valuable photographs. People and Hello! purchased the North American and British rights to the images for $4.1 and $3.5 million respectively, a record in celebrity photojournalism at that time,[187] with all proceeds donated to UNICEF.

48. They sold the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images with the aim of benefiting charity, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these valuable photographs. People and Hello! purchased the North American and British rights to the images for $4.1 and $3.5 million respectively, a record in celebrity photojournalism at that time, with all proceeds donated to UNICEF.

49. At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins.

50. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade. She gave birth to a son, Knox Léon, and a daughter, Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008. The first pictures of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for a reported $14 million—the most expensive celebrity photographs ever taken. All proceeds were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

51. On February 16, 2013, at age 37, Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene.

52. On February 16, 2013, at age 37, Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene. Her maternal family history warranted genetic testing for BRCA mutations: her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, had breast cancer and died from ovarian cancer, while her grandmother died from ovarian cancer. Her aunt, who had the same BRCA1 defect, died from breast cancer three months after Jolie’s operation. Following the mastectomy, which lowered her chances of developing breast cancer to under 5 percent, Jolie had reconstructive surgery involving implants and allografts. Two years later, in March 2015, after annual test results indicated possible signs of early ovarian cancer, she underwent a preventive oophorectomy, as she had a 50% risk of developing ovarian cancer due to the same genetic anomaly. Despite hormone replacement therapy, the surgery brought on premature menopause.

53. After completing each operation, Jolie discussed her mastectomy and oophorectomy in op-eds published by The New York Times, with the aim of helping other women make informed health choices. She detailed her diagnosis, surgeries, and personal experiences, and described her decision to undergo preventive surgery as a proactive measure for the sake of her six children. Jolie further wrote, “On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.”

54. Has the Latin phrase “Quod me nutrit me destruit” (“What nourishes me also destroys me”) tattooed across her stomach.

55. Ranked #87 in Premiere magazine’s 2002 annual “Power 100” list.

56. In role as goodwill ambassador, she visited Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand to check on conditions of 9,000 refugees from bordering Myanmar. [May 2002]

57. Was named “The sexiest woman alive” by the Swedish evening newspaper “Aftonbladet” (2003).

58. Voted the 3rd Sexiest Female Movie Star in the Australian Empire Magazine. [September 2002]

59. Voted #9 in the 2004 FHM UK list of 100 Sexiest Women in the World.

60. One of her favorite television series is King of the Hill (1997). She also enjoys the Game Show Network and Animal Planet.

61. She was voted #2 on VH1’s “100 Hottest Hotties”.

62. Named Most Beautiful Woman in People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People in the World (2005). More than 500,000 readers were polled.

63. She was made an official citizen of Cambodia by the King for her ongoing efforts to help the environment there. [August 2005]

64. Was nominated for Worst Actress at the Razzie Awards for four straight years from 2002 to 2005, but each time was beaten by another of her fellow nominees.

65. Performed her own stunts in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and received cuts from the chandelier scene as a result. She also set fire to her silk pajamas on the chandelier while she was doing her “bungee jumps” in the house. She was taken to a hospital with minor burns but resumed filming the next day.

66. Named #7 on Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 Women of 2005 list.

67. Ranked #1 in E! Television’s 2006 101 Sexiest Celebrity Bodies.

68. Has tattoos of the coordinates representing the birth countries of each of her kids (she even has the coordinates of France tattooed on her arm twice, one each for Knox and Viv), which cover up the Billy Bob Thornton tattoo. [June 2006]

69. Holds a Private Pilot Certificate with the Airplane, Single Engine, Land rating. This means that she is qualified to fly any single-engined aircraft based on land (i.e., no seaplanes) under visual flight rules only (i.e., no instrument qualifications yet so she cannot fly in conditions requiring instruments).

70. Has a fondness for Liverpool Football Club because her son Maddox “only wants to play for Liverpool”.

71. Became the third actress to join the coveted $20 Million Club (after Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz), when she signed to do Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) for that amount.

72. Named #2 in FHM magazine’s “100 Sexiest Women in the World 2006” supplement.

73. Is left-handed and therefore had to have guns specially made so that she could reload them easily for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).

74. Was on the “Time 100”, a list of the world’s 100 most influential people in the world by “Time” magazine (2006).

75. Ranked #33 on EW’s The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood (2007).

76. Ranked #3 in the 2008 Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

77. Friends with Gwen Stefani.

78. In July 2009, she was voted in first place in a poll to find the 100 Greatest Sex Symbols for Britain’s Channel 4. Elvis Presley was runner-up.

79. Was considered for the role of Natasha Rushman/Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (2010) after Emily Blunt dropped out of the project, but Scarlett Johansson was cast instead.

80. Replaced Charlize Theron as Elise Clifton-Ward in The Tourist (2010) shortly before filming began.

81. Was originally cast as Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) before being replaced by Charlize Theron, who in turn was replaced by Taylor Schilling.

82. Was considered for the role of Ryan Stone in Gravity (2013), but Sandra Bullock was cast instead.

83. Was named after costumer designer Angela Alexander who designed costumes for the film The All-American Boy (1973) that her father Jon Voight starred in. Jon and Angela became good friends on the set, and he became fascinated when she told him her original Greek name was “Angeliki”, which in Greek means “Angelic Messenger of God”. During the film’s shoot, Jon Voight came to Angela on the set and told her that one day if he and his wife (then actress Marcheline Bertrand) ever had a daughter he was going to name her “Angelica”. They had only had a son at the time; Jolie was born two years later. Although he originally named her Angelica, a year later after his divorce with Marcheline, she began calling her “Angelina.”.

84. Returned to work 8 months after giving birth to twins Vivienne and Knox in order to begin filming Salt (2010).

85. Ranked #10 in Men’s Health 100 Hottest Women of All Time (2011).

86. Delivered all her biological children via scheduled Caesarean sections.

87. Was a guest writer for The Economist’s special edition The World in 2008. In an article entitled A Year For Accountability, she stated that, “accountability is perhaps the only force powerful enough to break the cycle of violence and retribution that marks so many conflicts… Common sense tells us that when risks are weighed, decisions are made differently. When crimes against humanity are punished consistently and severely, the killers’ calculus will change.”

88. Was made a honorary Dame by Queen Elizabeth II on June 13, 2014 in London.

89. She handpicked Lana Del Rey to perform the song “Once Upon a Dream” as the main theme for Maleficent (2014).

90. Is one of 15 Oscar-winning actresses to have been born in the state of California. The others are Fay Bainter, Gloria Grahame, Jo Van Fleet, Liza Minnelli, Tatum O’Neal, Diane Keaton, Sally Field, Anjelica Huston, Cher, Jodie Foster, Helen Hunt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marcia Gay Harden and Brie Larson.