June 4: Actress and "Singer" (that's right singer), Angelina Jolie is 36-years-old today.

Angelina Jolie a singer? Yes, if you count a videotape of her along with two six grade classmates singing "New York, New York" and "Stand By Me"(see YouTube clip below), and a duet of "Downtown" with "light fingers" Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted. She also sang "Satisfaction" in Life or Something Like It. (Clip below.)

Of course, that's not what she is known for. Born Angelina Voight, she has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Jolie promotes humanitarian causes, and is noted for her work with refugees as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

She has been cited as one of the world's most attractive people, as well as the world's "sexiest" and "most beautiful" woman.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York.

As a child, Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting. When she was eleven years old, the family moved back to Los Angeles and she decided she wanted to act. Angelina enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions.

At the age of 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and decided she wanted to become a funeral director; she wore black clothing, experimented with knife play, and went out moshing - a dance in which participants push and/or slam into each other - with her boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother's home.

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Jolie returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school a year early. She says during her time as a student at Beverly Hills High School she felt isolated among the children of some of the area's affluent families; Jolie's mother survived on a more modest income, and Jolie often wore second-hand clothes. She was teased by other students, who targeted her for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces.

Her self-esteem was further diminished when her initial attempts at modeling proved unsuccessful. She started to cut herself.

Jolie was estranged from her father for many years. The two tried to reconcile and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001. In July 2002, Jolie filed a request to legally change her name to "Angelina Jolie," dropping Voight as her surname. After nearly 10 years of estrangement, in February 2010, Jolie publicly reunited with her father when he visited her on the set of The Tourist in Venice (also starring Johnnie Depp.)


Jolie began working as a fashion model when she was 14 years old, modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. But music has always followed her (among many others, I suppose.)

During that time she appeared in several music videos, namely Lenny Kravitz's "Stand by My Woman," and Antonello Venditti's "Alta Marea" in1991, The Lemonheads's "It's About Time" and Meat Loaf's "Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through" two years later.

At the age of 16, Jolie returned to theatre and played her first role as a German dominatrix. Jolie also appeared in five of her brother's student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Although she made her screen debut as a child with her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest in 1993 when she appeared in the low-budget production Cyborg 2 as Casella "Cash" Reese, a near-human robot, designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer's headquarters and then self-detonate. Her first leading role in a major film was in the cyber-thriller Hackers two years later.


She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical television films George Wallace in 1997 and Gia the following year. In 1999, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted.

Jolie achieved broader fame after her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001, and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.

She received further critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart and Changeling, which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She added to her reputation as a leading action star with the comic book adaptation Wanted and the 2010 action-thriller Salt.

Jolie has had her biggest commercial successes with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (with Brad Pitt), and the animated film Kung Fu Panda.

Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31% of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them; by 2006 she was familiar to 81% of Americans.

Jolie was among the "Time 100," a list of the 100 most influential people in the world as assembled by Time, in 2006 and 2008. She was also named one of the "50 People Who Matter 2010" by the New Statesman.

And to think; it all started with a sixth grade video of her singing and goofing around.


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