// The Chapters
From Hollywood Royalty to World Citizen
Six acts. Three decades. The most scrutinized woman on earth, and the one who used that spotlight to change the world.
1975 - 1997 · The Origin
Voight's Daughter
Born into Hollywood royalty, raised in chaos, and determined to burn her own path.
Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Jon Voight (Oscar winner, Midnight Cowboy) and Marcheline Bertrand (actress, model). Her parents separated when she was a year old. She was raised by her mother in near-poverty while her father thrived in Hollywood. She began self-harming as a teenager. She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute at 11 and began auditioning, but her wild reputation preceded her. She married Jonny Lee Miller at 20 wearing black rubber pants and a white shirt with his name painted in her own blood.
Hollywood's Daughter
1975 - 1990 · Los Angeles
A childhood spent watching her famous father on movie screens and his absence in real life. Her mother Marcheline worked at a restaurant to pay rent. Angelina collected knives as a teenager and experimented with self-harm. "I was disconnected from everything," she later said. "The cutting was a way to feel something."
The Blood Wedding
March 28, 1996 · Los Angeles
She marries Jonny Lee Miller wearing black rubber pants and a white shirt on which she'd written his name in her own blood. The tabloids go wild. She is 20 years old and already the most talked-about person in Hollywood who hasn't been in a hit movie yet.
1998 - 2001 · The Arrival
Girl, Interrupted
She stole the film from Winona Ryder, won the Oscar, and scared the industry with how little she seemed to care.
Gia (1998) for HBO — playing supermodel Gia Carangi, dying of AIDS. Her first major role and already she was transforming. Playing by Heart. Pushing Tin. Then Girl, Interrupted (1999), where she played Lisa Rowe, a charismatic sociopath in a mental institution. She obliterated Winona Ryder's lead performance and won the Oscar for Supporting Actress. Her acceptance speech was bizarre — she declared she was "in love with" her brother James Haven. The tabloids lost their minds. Hollywood was simultaneously thrilled and terrified by her. She married Billy Bob Thornton in 2000, wearing vials of each other's blood around their necks.
Lisa Rowe
January 14, 2000 · Girl, Interrupted
Winona Ryder was the star. Jolie had a supporting role as a sociopathic patient. By the end of the film, nobody remembered Ryder was in it. The scene where Lisa reads Daisy's shame out loud — cruel, electric, terrifying — is the performance that won the Oscar. She was 24.
Gia
January 31, 1998 · HBO
Her first transformation. Supermodel Gia Carangi — the rise, the heroin, the AIDS diagnosis, the death at 26. Jolie was raw and fearless. She won the Golden Globe and the SAG Award. HBO had found a star. The industry was put on notice.
Off Screen
The brother-kissing incident at the 2000 Oscars consumed tabloid coverage for months. In reality, Jolie and James Haven were close because they'd both been abandoned by their father. "He was the only person I trusted," she later explained. The media chose scandal over context. It was a pattern that would define her public life for decades.
2001 - 2005 · The Reinvention
Lara Croft to Cambodia
She became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Then she visited a refugee camp and everything changed.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her a global action star — $274M worldwide. She was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Then she went to Cambodia for a location shoot and visited a refugee camp. She adopted her first child, Maddox, from a Cambodian orphanage in 2002. She became a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. She divorced Billy Bob Thornton by phone. She visited Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Iraq. The wild child was becoming a global humanitarian — and nobody in the tabloid press could reconcile the two images.
Lara Croft
June 15, 2001 · Tomb Raider
$274M worldwide. She did her own stunts. She trained with the SAS. She became the face of a $1 billion franchise. But the film that made her an action star also took her to Cambodia, where she saw poverty that reoriented her entire life. The Tomb Raider shoot changed everything — not because of the film, but because of what she saw between takes.
Maddox
March 10, 2002 · Cambodia
She adopts Maddox Chivan from a Cambodian orphanage. He is seven months old. She is 26. It's the beginning of a family that will eventually span three continents: Maddox (Cambodia), Zahara (Ethiopia), Pax (Vietnam), plus biological children Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne. Six children. One mother reshaping her life in public.
UNHCR Ambassador
August 27, 2001
Named UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. Over the next twenty years, she'll complete more than 60 field missions to refugee camps in 30 countries. Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Kenya, Bangladesh. She donates one-third of her income to humanitarian causes. This isn't celebrity charity. This is a second career.
2005 - 2012 · The Peak
Brangelina
The most famous couple on earth. The paparazzi siege. The humanitarian work that continued under a media firestorm.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with Brad Pitt. $487M worldwide. It also ended Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston and launched the most photographed relationship in celebrity history. "Brangelina" became a global brand. The paparazzi followed them across continents. Through it all, Jolie continued her UN work, adopted Zahara from Ethiopia and Pax from Vietnam, gave birth to Shiloh in Namibia (the first photos sold for $4.1M, donated to charity), and starred in A Mighty Heart, Changeling (Oscar nomination), Wanted, Salt, and The Tourist. She was the most famous woman on earth and the hardest working.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
June 10, 2005 · Doug Liman
The film that launched a thousand tabloid covers. $487M worldwide. Brad Pitt leaves Jennifer Aniston. The public takes sides. "Team Aniston" vs. "Team Jolie" becomes the defining celebrity narrative of the decade. Through it all, Jolie and Pitt build a family across three continents.
Changeling
October 24, 2008 · Clint Eastwood
1920s Los Angeles. A mother whose son disappears and the LAPD returns the wrong child. Jolie's performance is restrained, devastating, and earns her a second Oscar nomination. Eastwood shot it quickly, as always. Jolie said it was the role that proved she could do more than action.
2nd Oscar nom
$113M gross
Shiloh — Namibia
May 27, 2006 · Swakopmund, Namibia
She gives birth to Shiloh Nouvel in Namibia. The first photos sell for $4.1 million — donated entirely to UNICEF. The paparazzi siege around the hospital requires military-level security. It's the most expensive baby photo in history and every cent goes to charity.
2013 - 2016 · The Transformation
The Decision
She published her medical records. She directed a war film. She made the most personal, public choice any celebrity has ever made.
In May 2013, Jolie published an op-ed in The New York Times revealing she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after testing positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation. Her mother Marcheline had died of ovarian cancer in 2007. Jolie's risk was 87%. The op-ed was read by millions and caused a measurable increase in genetic testing worldwide — dubbed "the Angelina Effect" by medical researchers. She directed In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) about the Bosnian War, Unbroken (2014) about Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, and By the Sea (2015) with Pitt. Then in September 2016, she filed for divorce from Pitt, citing "irreconcilable differences."
The New York Times Op-Ed
May 14, 2013 · "My Medical Choice"
"I carry a gene that gives me an 87% chance of breast cancer. I chose to have a preventive mastectomy." Published in the New York Times. Read by 50 million people. Genetic testing referrals doubled globally in the following months. Researchers coined "the Angelina Effect." She turned her body into a public health message.
In the Land of Blood and Honey
December 23, 2011
Her directorial debut. A love story set during the Bosnian War, filmed in Hungarian and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian. She wrote the screenplay, hired local actors, and produced it independently. Critics were surprised by the sophistication. The wild child of Hollywood had become a serious filmmaker.
The Divorce
September 19, 2016
Jolie files for divorce from Brad Pitt, citing irreconcilable differences. The custody battle that follows will last seven years and become one of the most contentious celebrity divorces in history. The documentary presents both perspectives without judgment.
Off Screen
Her mother Marcheline Bertrand died of ovarian and breast cancer on January 27, 2007, at age 56. Jolie was holding her hand. The BRCA1 gene that killed her mother was the same gene Jolie tested positive for. Her decision to publish the mastectomy op-ed was directly motivated by wanting other women to have information her mother didn't have in time.
2017 - Present · The Legacy
On Her Own Terms
Post-divorce, post-Brangelina, she rebuilt. As a director, a mother, and the most consequential humanitarian in Hollywood history.
First They Killed My Father (2017), about the Cambodian genocide, was a deeply personal project — she directed it with Maddox, now a teenager, serving as executive producer. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil earned $491M. Eternals for Marvel. Maria (2024) playing opera singer Maria Callas for Pablo Larrain. She continues her UNHCR work, now as Special Envoy. Her children are growing into their own identities — Shiloh's dance videos go viral, Zahara attends Spelman College. At 50, Jolie has become what she was always trying to be: a woman defined by her choices, not her scandals.
First They Killed My Father
September 15, 2017 · Netflix
A film about the Cambodian genocide, directed by Jolie, produced by Maddox — the son she adopted from Cambodia fifteen years earlier. Filmed entirely in Khmer with Cambodian actors. It's the most personal film of her career: a story about the country that changed her life, told with the child that country gave her.
Maria Callas
2024 · Pablo Larrain
She plays Maria Callas — the greatest opera singer of the 20th century — in the final days of her life. Jolie trained her singing voice for seven months. Larrain, who directed Jackie and Spencer, sees something in Jolie that action movies never captured: vulnerability, grief, and the loneliness of extraordinary women.