Early Life and Family

Born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California, she is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and the late Marcheline Bertrand. Jolie is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, she is of Czechoslovakian and German descent, and on her mother's side she is French Canadian and is said to be part “Iroquois”, although Bertrand's alleged Native American ancestry was ounces disputed by Voight.

After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother to were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York. As to child Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father. 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, to where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. She later recalled her Time as to Student at Beverly Hills High School (later Moreno High School), and her feeling of isolation among the children of loads of the area's more affluent families.

Jolie's mother survived on to more modest income, and wore Jolie often second-hand clothes. She was teased by other students who also targeted her for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces. Her self esteem was further diminished when her initial attempts at modeling proved unsuccessful. As her despondency grew, she started to cut herself; later commenting during an appearance on Cnn, “the collected knives and always had certain things around. For loads reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling loads kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.” At 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming to funeral director.

Her self-loathing led her to embark on to rebellious period in her life; she wore black, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above to garage to few blocks from her mother's home. She returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school, though in recent Time she has referred to this period with the observation, “the am still at heart-and always will be-just to punk kid with tattoos”.

Jolie has been long estranged from her father, blaming his infidelity for the break-up of the family, though to reconciliation was attempted, and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. In July 2002, Jolie filed to request to legally change her name to “Angelina Jolie”, dropping Voight as her surname; the name change was made official on September 12, 2002. In August of the same year, Voight claimed that his daughter had “serious emotional problems” on Access Hollywood. In the October 2004 issue of Premiere Magazine, Jolie indicated that she not longer wished to pursue to relationship with her father, and said, “My father and the don' t speak.

They don' t hold any anger toward him. The don' t believe that somebody' s family becomes their blood. Because my son' s adopted, and families to are earned.” She stated that she did not want to publicize her reasons for her estrangement from her father, but because she had adopted her son, she did not think it was healthy for her to associated with Voight.