With Cleopatra, curtains will be drawn on her acting career spanning some 32 years. Angelina Jolie, an Academy award winning actress; film director, screenwriter, author, is also a special envoy of UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
Along with Brad Pitt the couple are acknowledged as the highest earning celebrities in Hollywood. The Jolie-Pitt foundation has been pioneering in philanthropic exercises giving hope to millions of people without hope and bringing sunshine into blighted lives.
A Goodwill Ambassador for 10 years, Jolie goes to “where real bullets fly,” travelling to such war zones as Sudan’s Darfur region during the Darfur conflict, the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War, and the Afghan capital Kabul during the war in Afghanistan.
Angelina Jolie was named Hollywood’s highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009, 2011, and 2013.
Â
Born:
June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California.
Family:
She was born to actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand.
Marriage:
Jolie was married to Jonny Lee Miller from 1996–1999, and then to Billy Bob Thornton from 2000–2003.
Current relationship:
She’s engaged to actor Brad Pitt. They have three biological children – Twins Knox and Vivienne, and Shiloh; and three adopted children – Maddox from Cambodia, Pax from Vietnam and Zahara from Ethiopia.
Her humanitarian work:
Jolie first personally encountered the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world. Upon her return home, she contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots. To learn more about the conditions in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around the world.
Foundations:
– In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born son with his heritage, Jolie purchased a house in his country of birth in 2003. She subsequently purchased 60,000 hectares around the home, turning it it into a wildlife reserve naming it Maddox Jolie Project. In recognition of her conservation efforts, King Norodom Sihamoni awarded her Cambodian citizenship on July 31, 2005.
– In 2006, Jolie expanded the scope of the project—renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Project (MJP)—to create Asia’s first Millennium Village, in accordance with UN development goals. The compound includes schools, roads, and a soy milk factory, all funded by Jolie. Her home functions as the MJP field headquarters.
– In addition to the facilities at MJP, Jolie has built at least ten other schools in Cambodia, and funds the Maddox Chivan Children’s Center, a care facility for children affected by HIV, in the capital Phnom Penh.
– In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the birthplace of her daughter, she funds the Zahara Children’s Center, which treats children suffering from HIV or tuberculosis.
– She has also built schools elsewhere in the world, including a school and a boarding facility for girls at Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenya, a school for girls in Tangi, Afghanistan, and another girls-only school in the Afghan capital Kabul, funded through the Jolie–Pitt Foundation established in September 2006.
Recognition:
– In 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association.
– She was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA in 2005
– She received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee in 2007.
– In 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.
– In November 2013, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Academy Award, from the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.