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Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie has built a screen career around intensity, physical confidence and a willingness to move between intimate drama and large-scale spectacle. Born in Los Angeles on June 4, 1975, she trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and began acting professionally as a teenager. Her early leading work included the science-fiction sequel Cyborg 2, but Hackers became her breakthrough and later developed a cult following. Television films helped establish the dramatic force behind that striking screen presence. Jolie won Golden Globes for George Wallace and Gia, then received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Lisa, a volatile psychiatric patient, in Girl, Interrupted. It was a performance that made danger, charisma and vulnerability feel inseparable. Jolie became a global action star as adventurer Lara Croft in Tomb Raider and its sequel, bringing a rare combination of composure and physical commitment to the role. Gone in 60 Seconds, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wanted and Salt further demonstrated how comfortably she could command thrillers and action films. Yet her strongest dramatic roles often turn that authority inward. In A Mighty Heart, she played Mariane Pearl with restraint, while Changeling earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her filmography also includes voice work as Tigress in the Kung Fu Panda series and a commanding turn as the title character in Maleficent, a fantasy success she revisited in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Later roles have ranged from the action thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead to Marvel’s Eternals and Pablo Larraín’s Maria, in which she portrayed opera singer Maria Callas. Jolie’s career extends behind the camera as a filmmaker. Her directing credits include In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, By the Sea, First They Killed My Father and Without Blood. That movement between acting, directing and humanitarian work gives her career an unusual shape: star-driven genre filmmaking on one side, serious historical and personal subjects on the other.