With a keen sense of her own sexuality, sultry and mesmerizing actress Angelina Jolie (1975-), started acting at age five, grabbed her first screen role in 1982, and walked off with an Oscar for her stunning performance as the disturbed patient in Girl, Interrupted (2000).
"When I read a script and I'm scared to play the role, I know it's the right one," she explained. "I feel extremely blessed... I enjoyed all the steps that got me here."
Born on this day in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of veteran actor Jon Voight who played her father in Tomb Raider. For the demanding role, Jolie quit smoking and trained three months in gymnastics, yoga, weights, bungee-jumping, and kickboxing.
On portraying the video game heroine Laura Croft, Jolie said. "I love being this character... She doesn't hate... She just likes to have fun, she's open to everything."
One of her tattoos reads, "a prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages." The seductive star defended her wild, bad-girl reputation, "My tattoos say something that is very sacred to me and romantic even. You can almost say it's corny."
Her passionate life has been punctuated with attention-grabbing relationships. She's a media magnet throughout the world; bids for the first photographs of her daughter Shiloh were in the millions.
Jolie became a UNHCR Goodwill ambassador in 2001. She has traveled the world to raise awareness and support for refugees and has said of her commitment, "I believe in what the UN has always stood for—equality and the protection of human rights for all people."
All women are different. Hooray!