Angelina Jolie Biography
With her long legs, ample bee-stung lips and striking deep-set blue eyes, Angelina Jolie may have been destined for screen stardom even without the benefit of her acting lineage or her considerable talent. The daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, she began studying acting at age 11 at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in NYC. Even before commencing her formal training, Jolie made her screen debut as a tyke in a bit part in the Hal Ashby-directed comedy “Lookin’ to Get Out” (filmed in 1980; released 1982). Co-scripted and co-produced by her father, the movie was savaged by reviewers but its littlest thespian emerged unscathed.
Abandoning her youthful plans to become a funeral director, Jolie segued to show business as a professional model and actress in music videos. She went on to appear in five student films directed by her older brother, James Haven Voight, and as part of the Met Theater in Los Angeles honed her craft alongside such veteran players as Holly Hunter, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. Jolie returned to the screen in “Cyborg II: Glass Shadows” (1993), a better than average direct-to-video sci-fi actioner in which she played a heroic human-machine hybrid but garnered more attention and better notices in the cyber-thriller “Hackers” (1995). Playing Kate (a.k.a. ‘Acid Burn’), she was paired with rising young British actor Jonny Lee Miller as teen computer whizzes battling an evil genius. The film fizzled at the box office but the romantic leads sizzled and were briefly married from 1996 to 1999.