Her parents separated early and she and her brother were from then rose by her mother sacrificing her acting ambitions. They moved to Palisades, New York. From her early childhood Angelina Jolie had a great fascination for acting. She would watch movies with her mother and some time much later in her life she has said that it was this that had in her aroused the interest to act. They moved back to Los Angeles when she was barely eleven and got herself enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. She was trained there for two years and she started playing in many stage productions. While at the Beverly Hills High School, She still remembers how she was often ridiculed for her painfully thin physical structure, Glasses and braces. It was one of the most frustrating times. Her mother just managed their family with her income and Angelina Jolie often had worn second hand clothes.
The pain was too tormenting. She dropped out of the acting classes. Her modeling career did not do any good. He started wearing only black clothes and dyed her hair to purple color. In fact at one point of time she wanted to become a funeral director. When she broke away from her ‘live-in’ boyfriend, she rented an apartment close to her mother’s and returned to resume her theater studies and she subsequently graduated from her high school.
Jolie’s early work began as a fashion model. She started modeling in Europe and the United States after she signed up with Finesse Model Management. Her work places included mainly Los Angeles, New York and London. She has done a number of Music Videos like the Meat loaf (‘Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through’), The Lemonheads (‘its about time’), Lenny Kravitz (‘Stand by my woman’)etc. While at sixteen Jolie made a come back and played the role of German dominatrix.
‘Gone in 60 seconds’ is her first blockbuster and the movie that really made a superstar out of her was ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. This internationally successful movie required that she need to carry a strong British accent and practice martial arts rigorously.
Her luck at the movies did not really work wonders at the beginning. After several of her movies went unnoticed, she finally made it big with ‘Hackers’ released in 1995 wherein she met her husband Jonny Lee Miller. A movie which may not have commercially done wonders but was enough to get her talent highlighted. The real turning point in her career came from ‘George Wallace’. This won her a Golden Globe Award and was also nominated for Emmy Awards. Her portrayal in this movie was critically acclaimed. This was followed by ‘Hells Kitchen’, ‘playing by heart’, ‘The Bone Collector’ etc. Future project that is scheduled is named ‘wanted’ an action film based on graphic novel Mark Millar.