There’s the Angelina Jolie who’s now a single mother—managing the day-to-day chaos of six kids, and the trauma of her split from Brad Pitt—and there’s the Angelina Jolie whose latest movie, a groundbreaking film about Cambodia’s genocide, is also a thank-you to the nation that transformed her. At her new L.A. mansion, Jolie reveals the tension between the two Angelinas and the reason her life will never be normal. Like most things involving Angelina Jolie, stepping foot into her house is an experience so heightened one wonders if it’s for real or the product of careful orchestration. The large gates […]

She’s a newlywed mother of six, a superstar with little trace of the diva, a woman who bears witness to the terrible things people do even as she continues to celebrate the human spirit. Whether advocating for refugees or directing the forthcoming World War II survival epic, Unbroken, Angelina Jolie lets Janine Di Giovanni accompany her around the globe, discussing kids, marriage, war, and the hero she just lost. Sydney, Australia – December 2013 On an early-summer day on Cock­atoo Island, a slender woman in a sun hat stands on a dusty film set. With one hand shielding her eyes, […]

Angelina Jolie’s penetrating eyes are filling with tears. “I don’t want to cry, and I’m not going to cry in front of you,” she vows, quickly regaining her composure. The actress-filmmaker is choked up over the recent death of Louis Zamperini — a man who meant a great deal to her, and is the subject of her most significant directorial effort yet, Unbroken. Zamperini, a former Olympic runner, was on a World War II search-and-rescue mission when his plane went down in the Pacific. He was lost at sea for 47 days before being sent to a Japanese prison camp. […]

It took shape during her downtime, when the kids were asleep, and became a career-altering passion. Now, as Angelina Jolie’s screenwriting and feature directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, hits theaters, the 36-year-old star is feeling more vulnerable than ever before. On Malta, Jolie tells how a tale of love and war in 1990s Bosnia took her far outside her comfort zone—and why Brad Pitt thinks it will make her a nightmare. It was a secret project, something she did for herself, when no one was photographing, suggesting, or looking over her shoulder. Every evening, after the […]

Here’s how Angelina Jolie enters the story: by water taxi speeding across the black water of a Venetian lagoon. She is seen from above, from the window of a very old palace—it had once been the home of a nobleman, then a monastery, then an embassy, and is now a hotel, which is the entire story of Venice. She sits in an antique chair and sighs. Her tattoos have been covered with makeup. Somewhere in town is Brad Pitt, with the six kids, the nannies, and the teachers and help. Johnny Depp, Jolie’s co-star in The Tourist, is somewhere here, […]