angelina in love
The crazy girl with a thing for knives has survived a divorce, won an Oscar, and given up pain for a red-hot new romance.
Angelina Jolie didn't cry when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, or when she announced to the world that "my brother just told me that he loved me.... I am so in love with my brother right now" in her now infamous acceptance speech. Nor did she cry when she called her mother moments after leaving the stage and could barely hear the congratulations over the maternal weeping. Jolie's tears fell later. "They showed a clip of my dad running on the beach," she says. "And every time I see that I just fall apart. I have no idea why."
The clip was from Midnight Cowboy, filmed more than 30 years ago-before Jolie was born-and depicted Jon Voight at the height of his promise. "He was just happy and silly and free," Jolie says. "Not weighed down by the stuff going on in the world...the things he needed to take care of. That's the ideal moment for the person you love to be in, and when it's taken away...that's the worst thing in the world."
The vision of Angelina Jolie-reowned offscreen for her collection of tattoos and self-inflicted knife wounds- welling up at a vision of lost innocence may be more startling and subversive than even her declaration of brotherly love. But it is about matters of love and family that she is most proudly and helplessly operatic, in word if not always in deed. "The funny thing about this rumor with my brother," she says, "is that if I was, in fact, doing that? I'd say it. Everybody knows that about me!" And few are as well acquainted with the outpourings of her rage and affection as the two men with whom she's currently having lunch in West Hollywood: her brother Jamie Haven and her father. Haven, two years older, is as transfixing physically as his sister, though he is angular where she is luscious. (Jolie plans to open a production company with Haven, a graduate of the USC filmaking program who directed his sister in six films but who Jolie says has now "put directing aside.") He sits to her right as they both face their father, and the two men listen with a mixture of familial interest and bemusement to Jolie as she picks at a salad and recounts the events of her day, spent with an artist named Baron Margo, whose medium is automobiles. Jolie has driven the same Ford pickup truck since she was 17 ("I just finished paying it off," Voight deadpans) and is planning to drop some 100 grand on a customized Airstream trailer and two vintage cars (she test-drove one of them), newly refurbished with ponyskin upholstery, brass toggle switches, and -in one case- a butane-powered flame-thrower.
"You'd be impressed," Jolie says. "I didn't drive one of the dangerous cars."
"Oh," teases Voight, waggling his hips in his chair,"we've gotten so conservative!"
There's little risk of that, but Jolie's world has changed substantially of late. "Today in my life," she says, " I just feel like the luckiest, most blessed...I don't know how to explain it."
Which wasn't always true. Her parents split when Jolie was very young. ( "I remember them telling me that now their bond would always be because they had two children and they loved each other for that.") Then, when Jolie was eight, her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, moved her children from Los Angels to Sneden's Landing, an hour's drive from Manhattan, and moved them back four years later just as her daughter was about to enter some of her darkest years. "Thirteen, 14- that was a bad time," Jolie recounts. "Yeah. Very." It was 14 that Jolie acquired a live in boyfriend and a penchant for knives, which she occasionally used on her won body, creating some marks that remain to this day. What sparked her self mutilation? Some inchoate sense of being unable to feel anything, she offers. "But by the time I was 16," she says with a laugh, "I had gotten it all out of my system."
Through it all Voight was supporting his family, but the filmmakers of Stallone's '80s did not warmly embrace the icon of '70s sensitivity. "It wasn't a family with an actor who was doing million-dollar movies," says Jolie. "Sometimes as an actor you work and make money, or you don't work and don't make any money. But we n\were never lacking in anything." Perhaps, but a desire for financial independence remained, and at 16 Jolie finished school, moved out of her mother's house, and went to work as an actor herself- earning enough, she says, to become the first person in her immediate family to buy property of any kind. She won the lead in Hackers in '94, cultivated her much chronicled collection of tattoos, and just a few years into her career won a Golden Globe for the TV miniseries George Wallace. She might never have gotten the chance to show her true brilliance, however, without Gia, the HBO biopic in which her nakedness and her desperation- "I need you now," her character screams at her mother- would make Jolie a star and earn her a second Globe. Last year she won the role of Lisa, the sex-bomb sociopath in Girl, Interrupted, and her brazen depiction of Lisa's mania ("She wanted to eat and fuck everybody," says Jolie) , conquered the clinic, the movie, and the audience- and won her an Oscar. At 20 she married her Hacke rs costar Jonny Lee Miller (who also played Sick Boy in Trainspotting), and although she notoriously wore a white shirt with "Jonny" spelled out across the back in blood, she settled down with him in a West Hollywood apartment to a surprisingly conventional- although short- marriage. They split up after 18 months.
But while the world sees her as wild and wanton- slapping interviewers (at their request), casually acknowledging her bisexuality, and taking a CAA guy on a tour of New York City's bondage clubs- in her day day-to-day life Jolie loves Kmart, Easter baskets, and Domino's pizza, and she's been known to wrap scores of gifts for the crews of her movies. And it is the best gift an actor can receive -an Oscar- that has become the topic at lunch today. Not the ceremony. Not the honor. The award itself. The statue.
"The Showest award is really heavy," says Jolie. "The SAG award..."
"The Oscar used to be the heaviest," says Voight.
"The Oscar is heavy at first," pipes up Haven. "But after a while- it's comfy!"
Jolie proposes taking both her own and her father's Oscars and doing- what, exactly? Welding then together? Placing them atop one of her new cars?
"Well..." says Voight, laughing, "they always said it was a hood ornament." Then he adds, "You have to respect the Oscar."
"Yours was in a goldfish bowl!" exclaims Jolie with a big smile.
Turns out Voight's mother used to decorate their Westchester apartment from floor to ceiling for Christmas, and once she filled a goldfish bowl with marbles, stuck the Oscar inside it, and placed it by the front door. "That way," Voight recalls, "everyone could pull it out, hold it for a while, and have his Oscar moment."
Voight is holding forth now, and after glancing on several topics, including Albert Schweitzer and his African hospital, starts to recount a story about the late Richard Castellano, who played Clemenza in The Godfather and starred opposite Voight in a stage production of A View from the Bridge. Castellano apparently lived for quite a while with an intensely painful tumor on his head that he would actually pick at with a knife. "Let me tell you something about pain," Voight begins, as if ready to reveal a great human truth. But his voice trails off, his eyes fill with tears, and the table is suddenly silent.
And just as Voight seems about to surrender to sadness, Jolie steps in to save him. "Isn't it amazing the people we've talked about today?" she insists. "This man. the Baron, Albert Schweitzer..." And just like that she lifts her dad's spirits. For all her actressy riffs and verbal flights, she is far less weird and narcissistic than advertised. Moments later, good-byes are exchanged, and as father and daughter head off for a walk together there is the opportunity to ponder Jolie's latest 20 hours- which began with a pair of cranberry vodkas in a noisy bar on a Friday night, and would feature an unseen surprise guest.
TALK: It's been an interesting couple of weeks, huh?
JOLIE: I've heard it's been an interesting couple of weeks for me. I've avoided it and realized that if you don't read the paper it doesn't exist and you really don't give a shit. I've been in Mexico.
TALK: Doing Dancing in the Dark with Antonio Banderas. Souns like fun.
JOLIE: There is some serious erotic stuff in this movie I really haven't done those kind of scenes [before]. People think I have, because of my reputation, but the only time I did below-the-waist nudity in any way was in Gia. But that's it. Nobody's ever seen me really...above the sheets, goin' a little crazy and doing some things. I'm going to fight for them not to cut any of it. If they don't cut, it's going to get one hell of a rating. I don't know how people are going to react to this. They're probably going to think I'm out of my mind and sexually... They already think I'm sexually wacko: I'm sleeping with my brother, and I'm dating other men, and I'm also a vampire...
TALK: Don't forget the women. They think you're dating women, too.
JOLIE: Yeah. At the same time! Which is just confusing the issue, because I may love women- I have loved women in my life- but I don't cheat on them! [Laughter] I am, in fact, a one-at-a-time kind of person.
TALK: Okay, so you're not sleeping with your brother. But you're familiar with what people have been saying.
JOLIE: I've talked to my brother, and as long as he's not upset... And he's not. He feels that if it brings up issues about brothers and sisters...
TALK: It seems like he's handled his notoriety deftly.
JOLIE: Well, he's focused on the other things in life. What people think of us? Yeah, it hurts, but love can make people uncomfortable and love can make people upset. So what are the other rumors?
TALK: That's the rumor du jour.
JOLIE: I think there's another rumor, that I am actually with a man.
TALK: Yes, that's right. There is a rumor like that.
JOLIE: Which kind of counters [the first one], doesn't it? Hasn't anybody noticed? [Laughs] How could I be doing all these things?
TALK: Yes, there is a rumoryou're with Billy Bob Thorton. I guess that ran in the paper today.
JOLIE: That was in the paper? What did it say?
TALK: I think it said you were seeing each other.
JOLIE: This is one of those awkward moments. [Laughter] I...We've...been friends for a long time, and we've been spending more time together lately, yeah. I think he's an amazing person I've ever met in my life.
TALK: Why is that?
JOLIE: Well, he's always been my favorite director, the actor I love to watch, the writer I love to read, or hear his words said. And I met him, and he was just such a good person: one of the funniest people on the planet, and really- just a great, great person. He doesn't judge anybody.
TALK: Is that right?
JOLIE: He's the kind of person that I would like to be like, you know? So for all those reasons he's somebody I wanted as a friend. And , you know, he's the sexiest fucking... creature that ever lived. [Exhales] So I've been trying to be subtle, but that just went out the fucking window, didn't it? [Laughter]
TALK: I thought that there was a subtlety in the way you said it.
JOLIE: Noted.
TALK: So you're putting the knives away?
JOLIE: I haven't touched a knife in a really long time- I don't need one, I don't want one. Mind you, I will be doing Tomb Raider, and I will be probably throwing them. [Laughs] But I was 14. I was like a real punk kid, and I was going out of my mind. And then sex was boring and I was working and...
TALK: Sex was boring?
JOLIE: Well, at 14 I was a little, like, "Don't touch me!" and that doesn't really help when you're having sex. A lot of it came from trying to get out all the pain that was inside me. You can't join a war, so you have this weird war with yourself. Now, everything is just different.
TALK: As you look back, does 14 seem to have too early to have gotten really close to somebody?
JOLIE: No, because it was [a] two year [relationship] So maybe if I hadn't been with I might have been dating. But I felt I went through a marriage, living with him for two years.
TALK: Was your mother okay with that?
JOLIE: He lived with me and he used to spend a lot of time with me at my mom's house. And he was a really good person, a sweet guy- not threatening, not scary. She knew I was at that age where I was going to be looking around, and [either] it was going to be in weird situations or it was going to be in my house, in my room. He was just a sweet guy. Sixteen. Considerate of my parents. And when it was over, I graduated early, went to work-and then I met Jonny. I never had a one-night stand, ever.
TALK: That never had any attraction for you?
JOLIE: I'm too much of a control freak, and I like people too much to control them. So its kind of a Catch-22 [Pauses inexplicably for almost 15 seconds] I'm sorry; I can't breathe right now.
TALK: Take your time.
JOLIE: [Taking a deep breath] What was I saying? [Laughter] I live very much in the moment. But because of that, sometimes you don't come upon anything that is....lasting. You constantly let go of things and you're always alone: You're always back in a hotel room, by yourself at the end of the night, and you're always getting up to go on another plane. There is nothing that grounds you. You can enjoy everybody, but you don't really get to know anybody really deeply, and nobody gets to know you, and nobody will ever hold you, because you will never cry about anything. And then you find someone and you actually want to fall into their arms, and you want to cry, and you realize it's stronger to want to do that. And it's wonderful, because I actually know what it is that I need- finally, I know what that is.
TALK: And what is that thing you need?
JOLIE: It's none of your business.
TALK: On the contrary!
JOLIE: Yeah, well, I just think it's that person who makes everything okay. Who lets you be completely who you are and run around being absolutely just in need, which is so pathetic and it feels so good [Laughs]
TALK: It is a pretty good time, huh?
JOLIE: It's funny. It seems like so many things in life are good, but the greatest thing is that everybody's healthy. A lot of shit's gone over the past months, when everybody thought I was losing my mind. I was suddenly public, and I was just feeling...way too much , and it was hard. And after Girl, Interrupted, I was really in a lot of pain. I tried to hide from everybody and I was really just nervous and uncomfortable about life. But now everything is okay, and I appreciate life and live every minute. Yeah, so it's a really good time. [Pauses again for five seconds, as if transfixed ] You're with me, aren't you? Do you understand what's happening to me?
TALK: Um, what is happening?
JOLIE: Somebody just walked by the bar. [Collects herself] So tomorrow we're going to look for cars and trailers? I want an Airstream trailer. The next morning found Jolie no less cheery, if a tad sleepy, and willing to begin the day trip to Baron Margo's.
JOLIE: Sorry, I'm not a morning person. I was up until 4 a.m.
TALK: No problem. This can be a tough town to go out in until 4 a.m.
JOLIE: Well I didn't [go out].
TALK: Oh. Don't we get to ask what your evening consisted of?
JOLIE: No, but you can guess. [Smiles] Do I look happy?
TALK: Very happy. There's that [morning-after] scene in Gone with the Wind...
JOLIE: [Laughs] Yeah, that's just about my morning. Thta sounds about right. I'm not used to being this happy and safe as a person. And I'm safe, and happy, and sure of the most important things in my life. The most important thing about this morning may be the new tattoo that Jolie is displaying on her left shoulder: BILLY BOB. It is Thorton, the actor and auteur best known for Sling Blade and the forthcoming All the Pretty Horses, who has so transformed Jolie's outlook. the 44- year old has been married four times before-the first time when Jolie was just a toddler- and has spent the last three years in a relationship with Laura Dern. It was Dern he was referring to when he said in the May 2000 issue of Men's Journal, "I am now happily involved with someone who's my best friend." Ah, well. That's probably why the usual forthcoming Jolie is atypically coy on the timing of their relationship, though they seem to have met during the spring 1998 shooting Pushing Tin. In recent weeks Jolie has flown up to Los Angeles from Mexico, where she is shooting Dancing in the Dark, at every opportunity.
TALK: How long have you felt this way?
JOLIE: Um, only recently have I been able to really...yeah, recently. Things came together. When I first met him I was in shock. We were friends for so long, but I was shocked at the way I reacted to this other person. I just went on with my life, but I never really forgot...I never enjoyed anybody just sitting and talking. So recently I've been able to start spending time with that person, and...nothing else matters.
TALK: Were you able to keep in touch after you stopped working together [on Pushing Tin]?
JOLIE: No, not really. We were both living our lives. I didn't know if anything would ever be possible, you know? I honestly never expected....I liked him too much to think he should ever be near somebody like me.
TALK: Because you thought you were trouble with a capital T?
JOLIE: I just didn't think much of myself. And I realize that says a lot. I wanted to be better as a person. So I don't know what it was. It was just really caring more about somebody, really wanting them to live their life and do the things they do and...it's just so great.
TALK: Have you gotten to see his new movie yet?
JOLIE: Which one? All the Pretty Horses?
TALK: Yeah.
JOLIE: It's my favorite movie. I think it's the most beautiful film ever made. And that's not because I'm crazy about him. It's honestly just...In many ways its affected me that much more because everything I believe in as a person, when it comes to loyalty and the search for yourself and your life and honor and bravery and...it was where he stood. I was honestly just in awe of him when I saw it; I couldn't stop crying and laughing. It's really the best thing I've ever seen.
TALK: When did you get the BILLY BOB tattoo?
JOLIE: Recently...very recently.
TALK: Did you get it done together?
JOLIE: I went off on my own. It is just something I needed to have.
TALK: Was he happy? Surprised?
JOLIE: I don't know how shocked he is by the stuff I do; he knows me pretty well. [Laughs] But yeah, I think he...I think you're happy when somebody is that...um, that in love with you.
TALK: Why did you need to do it?
JOLIE: I'm a believer in things that make you happy. Tattoos and these thing that you wear? It's who you are: It's a statement of what stands behind you, what represents you, and where your heart is at and where your life is at. People think that's insane, extreme, and too much- but you know what? I'm madly in love with this man and will be till the day I die. So there you go. I've opened up, haven't I try to be subtle, but you know I can't with him. That's why I lost my mind last night. He walked into the bar.
TALK: Oh I didn't see.
JOLIE: That's when I stopped talking. He just walked past me. That's what happens to me.
TALK: Do you want to have children?
JOLIE: Yeah.
TALK: This is something you've said you hadn't wanted to do.
JOLIE: Well, I've always loved the idea of adoption. I love children in general, and I think I always planned to be alone....I don't know. It does change suddenly when you meet somebody. I was so suer that I was not capable of very much as a human being, with my work being the way it was, I didn't see how it was possible, and I didn't think it would be fair. But my priorities have changed. My life has changed.
TALK: Where was your mom when you won the Oscar?
JOLIE: She was home. Both my parents, they're so funny- they both like to come over before awards. My mom comes over and sits with me and has coffee or breakfast. And my brother and I usually have breakfast and then go together. And my dad usually shows up, so for like three hourswe're all just drinking coffee, eating lunch, and watching TV.
TALK: It's a little party. That's nice.
JOLIE: Yeah, it's really relaxed. And then I keep running through the house looking for pantyhose. [Laughter] My mom brought everybody a corsage of flowers and a little note. And she wrote me a note. And then my dad showed up with something for me and for my mom- because my mom works with me as well. I saw him give it to her as a congratulations for my having that evening, because she was responsible in many ways. So he celebrated her. It was pretty great. And I just thought, Well, it doesn't matter if I walk back with a statue or not, and I kept saying to my brother, "Okay, don't get upset, don't get upset."
TALK: Oh: "Don't get upset if I lose?"
JOLIE: Yeah. Because that was my whole stress. I just thought, "Oh God, they're going to be like worried about me, and they're going to be upset." And then Jolie found herself locked out of the awards altogether. Because she lingered too long with Jamie through a series of red-carpet interviews outside the auditorium, she was kept out of her seat until the first commercial break, more than 20 minutes into the ceremony. Unaware that, unlike in past years, this year Best Supporting Actress was not the night's first award, she assumed she was about to miss the announcement, and found herself begging an usher to admit her: "You don't understand," she pleaded. "My mother is at home with a VCR and this might be my one moment on camera all night." Frantically, she and Jamie tore backstage. Whom should they encounter there but James Coburn, last year's Best Supporting Actor winner and the man designated to present this year's Best Supporting Actress. He got them in.
JOLIE: ...and then I won! I called my mom and she was having a fucking heart attack. My father had called her- he'd been at Spago waiting for me- and apparently the two of them were on the phone crying, which is wonderful. When they saw me say to my brother, "I love you," they saw how much their two children love each other and how we're going to be okay always because we have each other. So they were, like, out of their minds. And three hours later I was on Air Mexicana back to shoot.
TALK: So after Dancing in the Dark wraps, what's next?
JOLIE: I've been gaining weight to play Lara [Croft, the heroine of Tomb Raider]. I will get bigger and stronger. I like being bigger. I finally got my ass back, 'cause I had lost weight. So I'm happy that I have my old ass back.
TALK: As I am sure everyone is.
JOLIE: But when you look for clothes, and you try to find an outfit that actually enhances your curves? It's impossible. Everything cuts your body down- or is overly sexual. [To the car's driver] I'd love to go to Mcdonald's. Can you drive through?
DRIVER: Yes, I'll drive through.
TALK: Have they told you physically what they want you to do for Lara?
JOLIE: I'm going to do everything, so I am going to take everything from archery to climbing, to gunplay, to street fighting. I always play women I would date. It'll be like Indiana Jones and a bit of James Bond.
TALK: James Bond was always kind of wanton.
JOLIE: Well, yeah! [Laughter] But you know what's weird? He actually got really normal, and I think that was a mistake. He used to be really kind of dirty. He used to be much more wicked. And I understand the whole politically correct feminist movement and all that. But at the end of the day even the toughest woman wants a confident man.
TALK: But you've never been with a Neanderthal or a big, macho...
JOLIE: No, but with my husband, I was certainly a wife. There was always an equality, but I was strong as a woman. But he was very much a gentleman. Maybe it's from being from England, but he just knew how to make me feel like a woman and a lady, and I treated him as a man.
TALK: That's interesting, because for my generation your father was the archetype of the sensitive man.
JOLIE: [Astonished, laughing] It's my father's fault? Oh my God! It's my father's fault for actually adjusting to the sensitive man! [Much laughter] You know, we all need to just wake up excited about life. I just want to do the job I always wanted to do since I was a little girl, and live in peace with family and people I love, and just be silly and collect T-shirts from gas stations and go on road trips and eat popcorn in the middle of the night and watch TV. That's all I want, you know? [The car pulls into the McDonald's drive-through].
MCDONALD'S SERVER: Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order, please?
JOLIE: Can I get a Happy Meal?