Facts
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.
More film work readily followed,
initially in small-scale character-driven
indies including an indifferently received
adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel Foxfire
(1996), where she played a mysterious
outsider named Legs Sadovsky--described
in Variety as "sort of a female James Dean"--who helps
some other teenaged girls stand up for their rights.
Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna's
romantic comedy-drama Love Is All There Is
(also 1996) displayed Jolie
in a humorous and innocent light as half of a pair
of star-crossed lovers divided by their families' feud.
That same year, she appeared in the
high-minded suspense drama Without Evidence,
playing a drug-addicted teen, and Mojave Moon,
opposite car dealer Danny Aiello
as what Variety called
"a male fantasy figure who rapidly
alternates between nymphomaniac and ice maiden". Playing God
(1997) was next, and Jolie capably essayed
a woman torn between her gangster boyfriend (Timothy Hutton)
and a discredited doctor (David Duchovny) in his employ. While
the films remained unseen by most moviegoers,
Jolie received strong notices for each of these projects.
As with many performers, Jolie had no compunction
about working on the small screen and, in fact, has
appeared in a handful of exceptional productions,
including a co-starring role
alongside Annabeth Gish and Dana Delany
as Texas pioneers in the 1997 CBS historical mini-series
True Women. Jolie then brought a fiery
passion to her portrayal of Cornelia Wallace,
the politician's first wife, in the
biographical miniseries George Wallace (TNT, 1997).
But it was her dazzling turn as another
real-life figure that catapulted her
into public consciousness. Her brave, sensitive
performance as the drug-addicted, AIDS-stricken
model Gia Carangi in HBO's Gia
(1998) brought her widespread critical acclaim.
Jolie was twice Emmy-nominated
in 1998 in the supporting category for George Wallace
(losing to co-star Mare Winningham) and as in the
leading one for Gia (losing to Ellen Barkin).
She did, however, win back-to-back
Golden Globe Awards for the performances.
After this spate of acclaimed appearances in
highly-rated television productions, Jolie
found her way to roles in films that similarly
showcased her acting strength. She received special notice
for her work in the comedy-drama Playing By Heart (1998),
as Joan, an outgoing club kid
smitten with the sullen Keenan (Ryan Phillippe).
Vivid and engaging, Jolie easily held her own
among an ensemble cast featuring
such luminaries as Gena Rowlands and Sean Connery.
The actress joined John Cusack and Billy Bob
Thornton in Mike Newell's NYC-set comedy about
air traffic controllers, Pushing Tin (1999),
playing Thornton's raucous wife,
and played a tough detective assisting a
quadriplegic colleague (Denzel Washington)
in the search for a serial killer in the
crime thriller The Bone Collector. Jolie
rounded out the year landing the sought
after co-starring role of a sociopathic
inmate in a psychiatric hospital in Girl, Interrupted,
based on Susanna Kaysen's best-selling memoir
of her own two-year stay in a similar institution.
Her showy co-starring turn netted her
a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
The actress continued portraying tough young women,
this time a car thief, in the flashy Gone in 60 Seconds
(2000) and as the flesh and blood
embodiment of the titular video
game action figure Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).
