Angelina Jolie was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 4, 1975. She 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 this inspired her interest in acting. When she was 11, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she was trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions.

Jolie first assignment as a model came at the age of 14. She signed with Finesse Model Management and modeled in both the United States and Europe, working mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. During this time she also appeared in numerous music videos, including those of Meat Loaf ("Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through"), Antonello Venditti ("Alta Marea"), Lenny Kravitz ("Stand by My Woman"), and The Lemonheads ("It's About Time"). At the age of 16, Jolie returned to theatre, and played her first role as a German dominatrix. However, her professional career began in 1993, when she played the lead role in the low-budget film Cyborg 2 . In 1995, she starred as Kate in Hackers, where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller. Angelina’s performance received recognition after the movie George Wallace for which she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy. In 1998, Jolie starred in Gia for which she won for the second consecutive year a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy. Offers began to pour in fast and thick. Her famous movies include Hell's Kitchen, The Bone Collector, Girl, Interrupted ,Variety Gone In 60 Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ,Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and A Mighty Heart .

Jolie is also famous for her humanitarian works. She came to know about humanitarian crises while filming Tomb Raider in poverty-stricken Cambodia. She visited different refugee camps around the world to learn about the conditions of people in these areas. She has donated $1 million for Afghan refugees in Pakistan in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal. She volunteered to pay all costs related to her missions. Impressed by her interest and devotion in the subject, UNHCR named her a Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. In 2003, she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA.

On March 28, 1996, Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her co-star in the film Hackers. However, their relationship didn’t last long, and they divorced in 1999. She then married American actor Billy Bob Thornton, whom she had met on the set of Pushing Tin, on May 5, 2000. This relationship too met the same fate and they divorced on May 27, 2003. Presently, she is linked with actor Brad Pitt though they never publicly commented on the nature of their relationship.

Jolie herself admitted in an interview that she is bisexual, and has long acknowledged that she had a sexual relationship with her Foxfire co-star Jenny Shimizu. Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. In 2006, Jolie’s name figured in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and she was described as the world's most beautiful woman in the "100 Most Beautiful" issue of People . Then, in February 2007, she was voted the greatest sex symbol of all-time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols.