Angelina Jolie was born on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were two working actors — Jon Voight, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for “Coming Home” (1978), and Marcheline Bertrand, who pursued her own acting career before stepping back to raise her children. Growing up in a household shaped by Hollywood, it was almost inevitable that Jolie would find her way to the screen. But the road she took was far from a straight line.
Jolie spent much of her early childhood with her mother and her brother, James Haven, after her parents separated when she was just one year old. Marcheline Bertrand gave up her acting ambitions to focus on raising the two children in Los Angeles. Despite the split from Jon Voight, the family maintained a visible public presence, and Jolie was photographed alongside both parents at various points during her childhood years.
As a young child, Jolie showed a natural comfort in front of the camera. She was five years old when she first appeared alongside her father in the 1982 film “Lookin’ to Get Out,” marking her earliest screen credit. It was a small role, but it planted a seed. Around the same time, she was already being photographed in family settings that hint at the striking features that would later make her one of the most recognized faces in the world.
Jon Voight remained a presence in his children’s lives despite the separation from their mother. Jolie and her brother James were photographed with their father on multiple occasions throughout the 1980s, including a notable shoot for Time Magazine in 1986 and an appearance at the 60th Annual Academy Awards in 1988. These early years gave Jolie a front-row seat to what a career in entertainment actually looked like.
At age eleven, Jolie enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York, where she trained seriously as an actress and appeared in stage productions. The method-acting environment at Strasberg pushed young performers to dig deep into emotion and character — a technique that would later define some of Jolie’s most celebrated performances. She studied there for several years, building a foundation that went well beyond natural talent.
By age 15, Jolie had started modeling. Her first fashion photoshoots, including sessions captured by photographer Harry Langdon, showed a teenager who was already completely at ease being photographed. She appeared in music videos and advertisements, quickly building a portfolio that went beyond the typical teen model look. Swedish magazine Café later named her the world’s sexiest woman, a recognition that reflected the attention her image was already drawing in these early years.
Throughout 1991, Jolie did extensive portrait and fashion work that produced some of the most well-known images from her early career. Multiple sessions from that year show her in a range of styles — from casual portraits to polished editorial looks. These photos document a teenager who was actively working and building a name for herself in Los Angeles’s modeling and entertainment circles.
By the early 1990s, Jolie was regularly photographed on California beaches and in outdoor settings, adding a more relaxed, candid side to her growing portfolio. These images from 1992 and 1993 show a young woman in her late teens — past the early modeling years and moving steadily toward her professional acting debut.
Jolie launched her professional acting career with the 1995 film “Hackers,” which gave her her first leading role. On set, she met actor Jonny Lee Miller, who became her first husband. Her early films did not find large audiences, but she kept working. In 1997, she won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of the wife of Alabama’s segregationist governor in the television film “George Wallace.” The following year, she played the real-life supermodel Gia Carangi in the HBO biopic “Gia,” earning widespread critical praise for a raw and unsparing performance. Her career-defining breakthrough came in 1999 when she starred opposite Denzel Washington in “The Bone Collector” and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for “Girl, Interrupted” — both released the same year. That year also brought “Pushing Tin,” where she co-starred with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton. She and Thornton married in 2000. During the filming of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” in Cambodia, Jolie witnessed extreme poverty firsthand. That experience launched her into humanitarian work, and the King of Cambodia later granted her official citizenship in recognition of her environmental and conservation efforts in the country.
