The Changing Roles of Angelina Jolie

24 November 2008

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Angelina Jolie is one of the most versatile actors currently in Hollywood and 2008 has demonstrated that as she moved from animation film Kung Fu Panda to Wanted's action chick Fox.

It's a change of pace again this week for the actress with her role in Clint Eastwood's Changeling, a role which sees her surrounded in Oscar whispers. Based on the actual incident that rocked California's legal system Jolie stars as Christine Collins who's son vanishes in 1928. Months later a nine year old boy is returned to her.

Dazed by the swirl of cops, reporters and her conflicted emotions, Christine allows him to stay overnight. But in her heart, she knows he is not Walter. Slandered as delusional and unfit, Christine finds an ally in activist Reverend Briegleb (Malkovich), who helps her fight the city to look for her missing boy.

The filmed was screened at Cannes in May to critical acclaim and many expect Angelina Jolie to be a very strong contender come February after she was overlooked for her role as Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart.

Her first lead role came in 1993's low budget movie Cyborg 2 as Casella Reese, a near human robot. hackers was next, where she met first husband Johnny Lee Miller, and although it failed to make a profit at the box office it gained a cult following.

A string of other roles followed but it was in TV movie George Wallace that she received award recognition, winning a Golden Globe, for her role as Cornelia Wallace in the biographical film.

She stayed with television earning critical acclaim for her portrayal of Gia Carangi in HBO's Gia. The film followed her life, career and her drug addiction and eventual death of AIDS. For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award.

Her career was on the rise as part of Playing by Heart's ensemble cast, which included Sean Connery, Jon Stewart and Gillian Anderson, she was once again subject to praise. After her partnership with Denzel Washington in the Bone Collector she moved on to Girl Interrupted.

It's 1967, and 17 year old Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) is like a lot of American teenagers her age confused, insecure, struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing world around her.

The psychiatrist she meets with (courtesy of her parents), however, gives this behaviour a name Borderline Personality Disorder, "manifested by uncertainty about self-image, long-term goals, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt" and whisks her away to Claymoore.

Here, Susanna discovers Lisa, Daisy, Georgina, Polly and Janet a group of offbeat young women who not only become her closest friends, but light Susanna’s way back to someone she had lost...herself.

Jolie took on the supporting role of Lisa for which she won her third Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

But since 2000 Jolie has seen her career soar and she is now Hollywood royalty and all this started when she landed the role of Lara Croft in the big screen adaptation of the hot computer game Tomb Raider.

The film went on to gross $275 million at the international box office as well as launching her as a female action star. Unfortunately the reprisal of this role in 2003 wasn't as successful.

In 2005 it was another action role as Jolie and Brad Pitt were Mr & Mrs Smith in Doug Liman's movie that followed a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. Despite poor reviews it was once of the biggest grossing movies of the year taking $478 worldwide.

There were a pair of serious roles that followed as she stared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd which told the story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency.

She followed this up in 2007 with A Mighty Heart in which she played Marianne Pearl, the wife of the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

A Mighty Heart tells Mariane Pearl's account of the disappearance and murder of her Wall Street journalist husband Daniel Pearl. Daniel was the South Asia Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and was researching a story on shoe bomber Richard Reid.

The story led the journalist to Karachi in Pakistan where he had been promised access to an exclusive source. He never returned. At the time of the ordeal his wife Mariane was six months pregnant with the couple's child.

Her husband's bravery led his widow to write a book about his kidnap, the desperate search for him and his subsequent murder A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl. She wrote the book to introduce Adam to the father he would never meet.

She became a stop motion animation character the same year when she took on the role of Grendel's mother in Beowulf.

2008 has seen the star gain her highest grossing film to date as Kung Fu Panda grossed a massive $626 at the box office.

Changeling is released 28th November

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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