Angelina Jolie: From the Lara Croft icon to the activist

When Angelina Jolie celebrates her 50th birthday on June 4, she looks back on a life that extends far beyond Hollywood’s borders. Born as the daughter of the actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, her way seemed to be drawn to the film world. But what she made of it exceeded all expectations.

Her extraordinary talent showed up early. After the first model jobs and music videos in the 1990s, she achieved the acting breakthrough with the HBO production “Gia-Prize of Beauty”. The international fame came in 2001 with “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”. Her most important works also include the drama “crazy” (1999), for which she received the Oscar, the moving drama “The Foreign Son” (2008) and the fantasy fairy tale “Maleficent – The Dark Faler” (2014).

Jolie became an icon, but fame was never an end in itself. “I have never expected to get this career and this family happiness, and I also do not imagine that I would have acquired both through my own merits. Therefore I feel the responsibility to redeem my person focused on my humanitarian projects”, ”

That is exactly what she did. Her commitment to the rights of refugees and displaced people began in 2001 when she became the goodwill ambassador of the UNHCR. Over 60 trips to crisis areas followed, she was appointed an expert in refugee questions and in 2012 as a special envoy.

Jolie also showed remarkable courage and openness privately. In 2013 she had both breasts removed due to a high genetic breast cancer risk, followed in 2015 ovaries and fallopian tubes. With her decision to make these very personal medical interventions public, she encouraged countless women worldwide to take her own health seriously.

Her family life became a symbol of diversity and cosmopolitanism. Together with Brad Pitt, whom she had met in 2004 during the shooting of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, she raised six children – three of them adopted from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam. The relationship between “Brangelina” was over more than a decade than one of the most dazzling partnerships in Hollywood.

But in 2016 this era was over. After an escalating argument during a flight, Jolie surprisingly submitted the divorce. This was followed by a long -term rose war for custody and fortune, which was not yet fully settled in 2025. “I separated my family’s well -being. It was the right decision. I continue to concentrate on her healing,” she said

After more than 20 years, she also ended her role as UNHCR special envoys in 2022 to work even more directly for human rights. At the same time, she established herself as a director and author. With films such as “In The Land of Blood and Honey” and “Unbroken”, she demonstrated that she can also tell important stories behind the camera.

Angelina Jolie is a lot: Oscar winner, director, mother, activist. But above all, she is a woman who uses her voice to make others hear. She is looking forward to her fifties, I have the feeling that I will really get going in the fifties. “Although her children would now ask her to no longer jump on the trampoline:” There was a day when I was an action star, and now the children tell me that I should get off the trampoline because I would be injured. “