Angelina Jolie: Motherhood brings out a softer side
By Karen Thomas
USA Today
Paramount Pictures via Gannett News Service
NEW YORK — Wild child Angelina Jolie has a new man in her life, one who has made her settle down and rethink her dark and risky ways.
Djimon Hounsou and Angelina Jolie star in the film "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life."
He's a toddler named Maddox, an orphan she adopted in Cambodia, and whose arrival, some have speculated, helped precipitate the end of her passionate and eccentric marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton.
"I live for my son," she says. "I want to love. I want to be a good parent."
Jolie, 28, has earned a complex dark-angel reputation by readily revealing private moments that most stars try to hide. But now she's showing off a softer, maternal side, even as she is back kicking serious butt as Lara Croft, video-game vixen turned big-screen adventuress. "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," the sequel to 2001's hit movie, opens Friday.
Much has changed in Jolie's life since the first "Tomb Raider." She was appointed a goodwill ambassador for refugees by the United Nations. She adopted Maddox after falling in love with Cambodia, where the first "Raider" was filmed.
Not long after the baby came into their lives, Jolie filed for divorce from Thornton.
Advertiser library photo • July 31, 2001
Then came a very public squabble with her father, actor Jon Voight, who tearfully told "Access Hollywood" that Jolie had "serious mental problems."
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Billy Bob Thornton after adopting a Cambodian boy. A court dissolved the marriage on May 27.
Jolie now seems reluctant to explore the dangerous persona that she says no longer exists and was highly misunderstood in the first place. The actress, who used to revel in stories about knife play during sex and her fascination with mortuary science, is a little more careful these days. She'd rather talk about how her life has been changed by Maddox and her work with the United Nations. But without her troubled past, would Jolie have been so convincing in roles such as the heroin-addicted model in HBO's "Gia," or a mental patient in 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," which won her an Oscar as best supporting actress?
Jolie saw her parents divorce when she was a toddler. (Her mother is French actress Marcheline Bertrand.) She graduated from Beverly Hills High at 16 and trained with legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg before her looks (part American Indian, part French) landed her modeling gigs.
Jolie was largely estranged from her father while growing up. But the two reconciled long enough to team up on the first "Tomb Raider," in which Voight played Lara Croft's father.
Then came the "Access" interview last summer. Voight said he had tried to get his daughter help and had failed. In response, Jolie issued a statement saying that it was "unhealthy" to be around her father, especially now that she had a son. She says she no longer speaks to Voight. He does not appear in the new "Tomb Raider."
A self-proclaimed "sexual person" who had a relationship with "Foxfire" co-star Jenny Shimizu, Jolie isn't dating right now. And Nicolas Cage is a "nice guy, but we're not dating," she says, rolling her eyes at the latest tabloid claims.
"My life is very full, and I'm sure at some point I'll miss sex, and I'll end up having a lover again. But not right now."
For now, life is movies, the United Nations and her son.
"She's a very proud mom, and it was very sweet," says "Cradle" director Jan De Bont. "It was a side of her I had never imagined." Still, De Bont says, "I think there's roughness about her that will never change. It's her edginess and attitude."
