He and Marcheline must have had an inkling that their children would have the stars in their sights when they named them: the reason Angelina and James were given such exotic middle names (Jolie and Haven, respectively) was so that if they ever wanted to act they would have a stage name at the ready. He was also keen to encourage his daughter’s imagination: when she was growing up, he let her believe that she was part Iroquois, from her mother’s side, in an attempt to enhance his ex-wife’s exotic background. ‘We always liked the idea of her as an Iroquois and I love that my kids have picked up on that.’ Even into adulthood, Angelina claimed that she had Iroquois blood, and at one point even campaigned for the tribe to allow her to join them in their ‘sweat lodge’!
Of her dad’s opinion regarding her desire to become an actress, Angelina has said, ‘When I decided to become an actress, he didn’t force me; he knew I wanted to do it on my own. I dropped my name [Voight] because it was important that I was my own person. But now it’s great because we can talk on a level few people can talk to their parents on. Not only can we talk about our work, but our work is about our emotions, our lives, the games we play, what goes through our heads.’
Jolie found that by the age of sixteen she had grown out of her awkward looks and was finally able to make a living out of modelling. She signed up with an agency called Finesse Model Management and modelled in both America and Europe, working mainly in New York, Los Angeles and London. She also made money appearing on screen in various music videos, including those by Meat Loaf (‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams Come Through’), The Rolling Stones (‘Anybody Seen My Baby’), Lenny Kravitz (‘Stand By My Woman’), Korn (‘Did My Time’) and The Lemonheads (‘It’s About Time’). Still very close to her brother James, she was more than happy to help him out with his student films for the USC School of Cinema, and appeared in five of the films he directed. She also went back to the Lee Strasberg school after graduating from high school and this is where she would land the first theatrical role that would get people talking.
When Angelina went along to audition for a part in Room Service, a comedy by John Murray and Allen Boretz, she decided that, rather than being conventional and going for a female role, she would challenge herself and land the part of a male dominatrix: ‘I thought, you know, which character do I want to audition for? The big, fat, 40-year-old German man – that’s the part for me.’
Voight was more than a little surprised when he went along to see his daughter’s production. ‘I was a little shocked seeing [Angelina] walk around as Frau Wagner. But the shock came from the realisation that, “Oh my God, she’s just like me.” She’ll take these crazy parts and be thrilled that she can make people chuckle or whatever.’
Now financially independent, Angelina relocated to New York and enrolled in night classes (majoring in film) at New York University, but, by the age of eighteen, she had quit modelling ‘because I couldn’t take the pressure of always trying to be taller and skinnier and stuff’ and landed her second film role. And unlike Lookin’ to Get Out, securing the part had nothing to do with nepotism. In fact, it was around this time that Jolie had the Voight dropped from her name, believing that it was ‘important to be her own person’.
Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow was a sequel to Cyborg, the 1989 original that had been a surprise hit at the box office. The original had launched the career of Jean Claude van Damme – or the ‘Muscles from Brussels’, as he later became known. Although he was fairly unknown at the time of the film’s release, the beefy actor may have had something to do with the film’s success; he didn’t appear in the sequel and the film didn’t even make it into cinemas, going straight to video. It was set in 2074 and Jolie played a cyborg (a person who is aided by a mechanical or electronic device) – Casella Reese, aka Cash – who has been designed specifically to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer’s headquarters and then self-detonate. Things don’t exactly go to plan, though: Jolie’s character falls in love with a human being, Colson Ricks, and the couple soon escape their predicament with the help of a cyborg mercenary.
As artistic vehicles go, this wasn’t the best choice for the ambitious Angelina to showcase her acting talents, and unfortunately the most memorable thing about the film is the fact that she bared her breasts in it. The film’s failure left the young actress feeling disillusioned with her craft and catapulted her into a depression so severe that at one point she even considered taking her own life. ‘I didn’t know if I wanted to live because I didn’t know what I was living for,’ she recalled in an interview in 2001. Jolie admits that she was unhappy in New York and felt very alone. ‘I didn’t have any close friends any more and the city just seemed cold and sad and strange… everything that was kind of romantic about New York just got very cold for me,’ she said.
Jolie’s thoughts turned to suicide once more and she even sat down one evening in a New York hotel room and wrote a note to the maid, telling her to contact the police so that she didn’t have to discover the body. At the last minute, however, Jolie found that she couldn’t go through with it. ‘I didn’t know if I could pull the final thing across my wrists,’ she admitted.
Wandering the streets of New York, she spotted a beautiful kimono that she wanted to buy, and suddenly realised that, by killing herself, she’d never actually be able to wear it. It was when she got back to her hotel room that she realised she couldn’t go through with her desperate plan. ‘I kind of lay there with myself and thought, “You might as well live a lot, really hard and not give a shit, because you can always walk through that door.” So I started to live as if I could die any day.’
Perhaps it was this ‘seize the day’ attitude that led Angelina to her second significant film role – and, in turn, her second significant relationship.
‘When I was 14, I visited London for the first time,’ revealed Jolie a few years ago. ‘And that’s when I discovered my problem. English men appear to be so reserved, but underneath they’re expressive, perverse and wild. All the insane moments in my life have happened with English men.’
With this in mind, it was perhaps inevitable that, at the age of nineteen, Angelina would fall for British actor Jonny Lee Miller on the set of Hackers. Directed by Iain Softley, this film follows a group of young people who are trying to prevent the unleashing of a dangerous computer virus while being pursued by the US Secret Service. Miller and Jolie play computer-literate teens (Dade Murphy and Kate Libby respectively) who get caught up in the corporate scam after accidentally hacking into the computer system of a huge conglomerate. It was Miller’s first film (he would go on to land the role of Sickboy in Trainspotting, his most famous role to date, a year later) and Jolie’s first experience of a major studio picture.
Film critics were fairly underwhelmed by Hackers and it was something of a flop, but Angelina knew that, as a woman, she couldn’t afford to turn parts down so early on in her career. ‘Dad sticks to this philosophy that any film he does should always say something positive or he won’t do them,’ she said. ‘I want to be the same, but I’ve got to be realistic. There was less quantity and more quality when he started. I’ve got to be less picky. It’s hard being a young actress now; no one wants you to keep your clothes on.’
If anything, Jolie was quite relieved that Hackers wasn’t a huge success, because it meant she was less likely to be typecast in the future. ‘I was a bit scared that, if the movie went really big, it would be something to be remembered by. Don’t get me wrong, I loved working with Iain, but I don’t want to be stuck in that character forever.’
If anything, Hackers is only remembered for the fact that it introduced