安吉麗娜•朱莉的非凡轉變

On the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, the name stood out from those of charity workers, teachers and civil servants: Angelina Jolie – Honorary Dame Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, for her campaigning work “for services to UK foreign policy and the campaign to end war zone sexual violence”. This means that the Hollywood A-lister has become one of a tiny group of US citizens to be honoured by the British establishment (though they can’t use their titles).

It was an extraordinary accolade – doubly so when you consider that the demure Jolie, who last week hosted a London summit dedicated to ending war rape in her capacity as special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is the same Jolie who, not long ago, was making headlines for her tattoos, hard-drug use and intimately kissing her brother in public.

Then she was a twice-divorced, self-confessed bisexual and self-harmer. But in just 14 years, Jolie, 39, has dramatically reinvented herself, from out-of-control starlet and apparent homewrecker (actor Brad Pitt left his wife Jennifer Aniston after meeting Jolie on the set of their film Mr & Mrs Smith) to devoted mother and humanitarian powerhouse, travelling to war zones such as Congo with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Her youthful recklessness has transmuted into selfless bravery. Her unauthorised biographer, Andrew Morton, whose most famous subject was Diana, Princess of Wales, became intrigued after learning that she’d been working in Peshawar, Pakistan – “hardly a place for charity workers, let alone bona fide Hollywood movie stars,” he says. “We now see her as a humanitarian and a substantial, solid and serious-minded citizen of the world, not the woman who broke up Jen and Brad.”

Then, last year she underwent a preventative double mastectomy after testing positive for a gene linked to breast and ovarian cancers, which killed her mother at the age of 56. This gave Angelina a powerful voice in women’s health.

Indeed, so drastic has been her rehabilitation that Jolie’s status is now among the tiny section of Hollywood stars deemed untouchable. According to US pollster Q Scores, which determines celebrities’ likeability factor, Jolie’s score is 23 – meaning 23 per cent of US adults consider her “one of [their] favourite personalities”, while 85 per cent of adults know who she is. This compared with a 15 per cent likeability score and 46 per cent awareness for the average actress. Many of her films have performed poorly at the box office (though her latest,Maleficent, has earned $140 million in just three weeks), yet Jolie is considered one of the few female stars who can “carry” a film, and is estimated to be Hollywood’s highest-paid actress, earning $33 million last year.

“She’s hardly Meryl Streep, but the actual quality of her work is irrelevant. She’s Hollywood royalty, a megabrand,” says one film insider. Indeed, a recent poll named her, along with Pitt, as the celebrities most sought-after for endorsements. “Jolie has formed a strong emotional bond with American consumers, which is on the rise,” confirms Henry Schafer, executive vice-president of Q Scores.

Perhaps her appeal comes from her chameleon-like qualities. She has a sex-bomb persona (she is regularly named the world’s most beautiful woman by magazines such as Vogue) but is simultaneously a “madonna”, the mother of six children, three of whom are adopted.

“What’s remarkable about Jolie is she’s the best at everything she touches,” says Christina Hopkinson, author of The A-List Family. “When she was in her bad-girl phase, she was the baddest imaginable. Now she’s a mother, she’s the ultimate earth-mother of three boys and three girls – even her twins were the perfect boy-girl combination.

“She projects a cool, independent persona but she also appears to have a blissful home life with the ultimate movie star, Brad Pitt. She’s skinny but with big breasts – and you can’t even hate her for those breasts, because she’s had a mastectomy.”

Born in Los Angeles, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon “Midnight Cowboy” Voight and the late Marcheline Bertrand, but her parents split when she was a baby as a result of Voight’s infidelities. Jolie and Voight’s Relationship has been stormy ever since, with the pair not speaking for years at a time.

In contrast, she forged a possibly-too-close bond with her mother, who treated her like a friend, allowing Jolie to have a live-in lover from the age of 14.

Living in modest circumstances compared with her peers at Beverly Hills High School, Jolie was bullied. She became anorexic and began to self-harm, cutting herself with her collection of knives. Wearing only black clothes, she aspired to become a funeral director, taking a course in embalming. She decorated her body with 14 tattoos, including the Latin proverb quod me nutrit me destruit (“what nourishes me destroys me”). By the age of 20, she had tried “just about every drug possible”, including heroin.

At her first wedding, to British actor Jonny Lee Miller when she was just 20, she wore black rubber trousers and a white T-shirt, upon which she had written the groom’s name in her blood. Before they separated, Jolie had a relationship with an actress and has since confirmed her bisexuality to interviewers.

Four years later, she married actor Billy Bob Thornton after a two-month courtship. The pair wore each other’s blood in phials around their necks and for their first anniversary, she bought him his-and-hers cemetery plots in a Louisiana graveyard. Yet 18 months later they abruptly split.

By now Jolie was established, winning the best-supporting actress Oscar for her role in Girl, Interrupted. After the ceremony, she scandalised onlookers by passionately kissing her brother, actor James Haven, and telling the world, “I’m so in love with him”. Haven, for his part, is an unmarried, born-again Christian. He said: “Because I’m so close to Angie, it’s like I’ve already got the perfect woman in my life, and it’s hard for anyone else to live up to that.”

But just as tongue-wagging about her eccentricities was peaking, Jolie – then 26 – began visiting refugee camps. Her first trip to Sierra Leone was revelatory. “I realised how completely naive I was to think I had a difficult life,” she recalled. “It was as if someone slapped me across the face and said, 'Oh, my God, you silly young woman from California, do you have any idea how difficult the world really is for so many people?’ ”

The turning point, says Morton, came when she made Tomb Raider in 2001. “It was her rehab role, the actress weaning herself off heroin in order to sustain the physical demands of the movie,” he says. “During the filming, she decided to adopt a Cambodian boy named Maddox. The infant changed her life, she began focusing on him and her growing role as an international advocate for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.”

In 2005, she adopted Zahara from Ethiopia (Pax, from Vietnam, arrived in 2007), that same year making Mr & Mrs Smith. Within months, Jolie and Pitt were visiting Pakistan together to solicit aid donations after an earthquake, and within a year Jolie was pregnant.

Yet her new reputation as a husband-stealer had no effect on Jolie’s popularity. Polls showed her kudos continued to rise year on year, despite Aniston describing Jolie’s behaviour as “uncool”, and the couple announced their engagement in 2012. Pitt has downplayed any suggestions that there was a “dastardly affair” and insists that his break-up with Aniston was amicable.

An executive on the Hollywood magazine Variety said: “She is perceived as somewhat saint-like – a woman who only wants to do good in the world. When you’re in her presence, she’s so serene, you’d feel like an idiot asking a dumb question, such as: 'So, did you break up Jennifer Aniston’s home?’ ”

Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, uses Jolie as a prime example of reinvention. “Because her negative brand attributes centred around too much predatory sexuality,” she says, “motherhood and her clear devotion to her children showed a different, gentler side and balanced out her reputation.”

The couple’s fame rose as they travelled the world with their huge “rainbow family”, alternatively making films or doing good – be it campaigning to help New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or working in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Many suspect that Jolie has brilliantly manipulated her narrative so the husband-stealing/wild-child persona has been airbrushed by the human saint. Whatever the motives, for more than a decade she’s travelled frequently to some of the most insalubrious corners of the world, bringing huge publicity to previously unfashionable causes.

“Frankly, if a celebrity isn’t genuinely interested in poverty and is simply trying to get good press, there are better ways to do it. Travelling to Darfur or Congo is dangerous, expensive and uncomfortable, and the outhouses have bats, scorpions and camel spiders,” says Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, who spoke with Jolie at a 2008 session at the Council on Foreign Relations about justice in Darfur.

While she plays the celebrity game, it always seems to serve a higher purpose than personal vanity or greed. Pictures of her newborn twins were sold for a $14 million donation to her Jolie-Pitt Foundation. Those who have worked with her say her behaviour is strikingly un-divalike and professional.

Still, a suspicion persists that her youthful eccentricity (her father once tearfully described her as having “serious mental problems”) has never gone away, but that her restlessness is now being channelled to positive ends.

Now Jolie is reinventing herself again, as a director. Her latest, second, film Unbroken, about a Second World War hero, is hotly tipped as a 2015 Oscar contender. But before picking up another golden statue, there is the matter of a visit to Buckingham Palace to collect her gong.在英國女王生日宴的貴客名單上，一個名字赫然立於慈善工作者、教師和公務人員名單之列：安吉麗娜·朱莉。她致力於爲英國對外政策提供服務並號召結束戰爭地區的性暴力，因此被授予聖米迦勒及聖喬治勳章，成爲一名“榮譽女爵士”。這也意味着，這位好萊塢的一線女星成功躋身於獲封過英國爵士的美國人之列（儘管他們不能使用他們的頭銜）。

端莊的朱莉，作爲聯合國難民署特別專員，在上週主持了致力於結束戰爭性暴力的倫敦峯會；而這樣的朱莉在不久之前，還因其紋身、吸毒和在公衆場合親密地親吻她的哥哥而登上新聞的頭條。

她離過兩次婚，承認自己是一個雙性戀者，喜歡自殘。然而，在14年當中，39歲的朱莉發生了令人驚歎的轉變：她從原先一個行爲失控的小明星和插足他人家庭的第三者（布拉德·皮特在拍攝電影《史密斯夫婦》時認識了朱莉，並因她而離開了自己的妻子），變爲了一個無私奉獻的母親和人道主義奉行者，與英國外交大臣威廉·黑格一同前往像剛果這樣的戰爭地區。

她年輕時的莽撞已經轉變成爲無所畏懼的勇敢。安德魯·莫頓是其非正式的傳記作家，他最爲有名的傳記對象便是威爾士王妃戴安娜。莫頓了解到朱莉曾在巴基斯坦的白沙瓦工作過，便對朱莉產生了興趣。“對於慈善工作者而言，很難有一席之地，更別提那些好萊塢真正的電影明星了，”他說。“我們現在將其視作一位人道主義者，以及一位重要、堅強、認真的世界公民，而非是破壞詹妮弗和布拉德婚姻的那個人。”

朱莉的母親因患乳腺癌和卵巢癌，56歲時就去世了。去年，當她得知自己擁有與這兩類癌症相關的基因後，她接受了預防性的雙乳切除術。這讓她在女性健康方面，獲得了重要的話語權。

的確，朱莉對自己名譽的修復取得了驚人的效果，她是好萊塢明星當中爲數不多的地位難以撼動的人。美國的民意調查公司Q Scores調查了明星受人歡迎的原因，朱莉在其中獲得的分數是23分，這意味着有23%的美國人認爲她擁有“他們最喜歡的性格之一”，而85%的成年人都知道她是誰，而這也遠高於一般女演員15%的受歡迎分數和46%的被瞭解程度。她主演的許多電影，票房表現都很糟糕（儘管她的最新作品《沉睡魔咒》，上映3周就獲得了1.4億元的票房收入），但人們仍將其視爲少有的能“扛起”一部電影的女星，並預估其爲好萊塢收入最高的女演員，僅去年就獲得了3300萬美元的收入。

“她很難成爲梅麗爾·斯特里普，但其作品的實際質量與此無關。她是好萊塢中的皇族和大腕，”一位電影從業者表示。的確，最近的一項民意調查將她和皮特定義爲廣受讚譽和歡迎的名人。Q Scores公司的執行副總裁亨利·謝弗對此予以確認：“朱莉與美國消費者之間建立了一種強烈的情感聯繫，這一聯繫日益密切。”

或許其吸引力源自於她多變的個性。她有着性感的一面（她經常被像Vogue這樣的雜誌評爲世界上最美的女人），但她同時也有聖母一樣的品質，她是6個孩子的媽媽，其中的3個孩子是收養的。

“朱莉最棒的一點在於，她能將自己所接觸的每一件事都做到最好，”《一流家庭》一書的作者克里斯蒂娜·霍普金森說。“當她還處在壞女孩時期，她是人們所能想象到的最壞的女孩。而現在她是一個母親，是3個男孩和3個女孩的母親，甚至她的雙胞胎是最完美的龍鳳胎。”

“她展現出冷靜和獨立的一面，但同時和動作影星布拉德·皮特有着幸福的家庭生活。她很瘦，卻有着豐滿的胸部，可你無法爲此而嫉妒她，因爲她已經接受了雙乳切除術。”

朱莉在洛杉磯出生，她的父親是主演了電影《午夜牛郎》的喬恩·沃伊特，母親瑪琪琳·伯特蘭德也是一名演員。然而，由於父親的出軌，她的父母在她還是嬰兒的時候就離婚了。從那時起，朱莉和父親的關係就一直很僵，雙方曾一度數年沒有交流。

與此相反，她與母親關係非常親密，母親如朋友般對待她，允許朱莉從14歲時就與男友同居。

與她在比弗利山高中的同齡人相比，她的生活條件很一般，她也常常受到欺負。她出現了厭食的症狀，開始自殘，用自己收集的各種刀具割傷自己。她只穿黑色的衣服，立志成爲一名殯儀業工作者，選修了有關屍體防腐的課程。她身上共有14處紋身，其中包括了一條拉丁諺語“培育我的東西同時也摧毀了我。”20歲時，她幾乎吸食過各類毒品，其中包括海洛因。

她20歲就開始了自己的第一次婚姻，同英國演員約翰尼·李·米勒結婚，她穿了一條黑色長膠褲和一件白色T恤，並在T恤上用自己的血寫上了新郎的名字。在他們離婚之前，朱莉同一名女演員關係親密，她也向記者們承認了自己是一名雙性戀者。

4年後，她同只交往了2個月的演員比利·鮑伯·鬆頓結婚，這對夫婦脖子上戴着裝有各自鮮血的小玻璃瓶。在他們的首個結婚紀念日，朱莉在路易斯安那州爲丈夫買了塊供他倆使用的雙人墓地。18個月後，他們就突然離婚了。

現在，朱莉已經改頭換面了，她在電影 《移魂女郎》中的出色表演，爲她贏得了奧斯卡最佳女配角獎。在頒獎典禮之後，她與哥哥激吻，並向世界宣告：“我非常地愛他。”此舉引起了軒然大波。她的哥哥海文是一位單身並歷經重生的基督徒，他表示：“我和安吉（安吉麗娜的暱稱）是如此的親密，這讓我覺得自己已經找到了生命中那個完美的女人，其他人很難像她這樣完美。”

然而，就在人們紛紛議論她的古怪行爲時，朱莉26歲起就開始訪問難民營。她的第一站是在塞拉利昂，這次經歷讓她深受啓發。“我原本以爲自己的生活很艱難，參觀完這裏後，我意識到自己的想法是如此地天真，”她回憶說。“這就如同有人給了我一耳光，並告訴我‘我的天啊，你就是一個來自加利福尼亞州的蠢女人，難道你不知道這個世界對很多人來說，都是如此的艱難。’”

莫頓表示，朱莉人生的轉折點出現在2001年拍攝電影《古墓麗影》期間。“這個角色讓她重回正軌，爲了保持電影拍攝所需的體力，她戒掉了海洛因，”莫頓說。“在拍攝期間，朱莉決定收養一個名叫馬多克斯的柬埔寨男孩。這個孩子改變了她的人生，她的重心開始放在孩子身上，並逐漸成長爲國際上聯合國高級難民署的堅定支持者。”

在2005年，她從埃塞俄比亞收養了扎哈拉（2007年又從越南收養了派克斯），同年，她接拍了電影《史密斯夫婦》。數月內，朱莉和皮特一同訪問了巴基斯坦，爲地震尋求援助和捐款。一年之內，朱莉懷孕了。

然而，她搶奪別人丈夫的行爲，並未對自己的知名度產生任何影響。民意調查顯示，人們對她的讚譽逐年增多，儘管安妮斯頓稱她的行爲“不光彩”。2012年，這對情侶宣佈訂婚。皮特對任何有關“懦弱行徑”的言論不予理會，堅稱他和安妮斯頓是友好分手。

好萊塢《Variety》雜誌的一位行政主管表示：“人們將朱莉視作一位聖潔之人，在世界上，她只是一個想要做善事的女人。看到她時，她給人一種安詳之感，你會覺得自己像個傻子，只會問些愚蠢問題，如‘是你破壞了詹妮弗·安妮斯頓的家庭？’”

《轉變自己：定義你的標籤，暢想你的未來》一書的作者朵瑞·克拉克，將朱莉的經歷視作轉變自己的典型事例。“由於她的負面標籤過多地強調其女性生活，”克拉克說，“她作爲一名母親的生活，爲孩子們無私奉獻，則展示了她全新且溫和的一面，這改善了她的聲譽。”

這對夫婦帶着他們龐大的“多彩家庭”遊歷世界，不是在拍電影，就是在做善事，例如，在卡特里娜颶風過後，他們積極奔走幫助新奧爾良市；2010年海地地震後，他們前往海地工作。他們所做的這些事，都爲他們贏得了良好的口碑。

很多人懷疑，朱莉成功地操控了人們對她的描述，因此，她的高尚便成功地掩蓋了自己插足他人家庭和年輕時性格放蕩不羈的一面。無論出於怎樣的動機，10年多來，她頻繁地探訪了世界上一些最爲混亂的角落，讓公衆廣泛地關注這些以前並未盛行的事業。

“坦白地說，假如一個名人不是真正地對貧窮感興趣，只想讓自己獲得媒體的讚譽，是可以通過更好的方式來實現這一目的。前往達爾富爾地區或剛果，路途危險、開銷很大且旅程顛簸，住在棚屋中，還會遭遇到蝙蝠、蠍子和駝蛛，”《紐約時報》的尼古拉斯·克里斯多夫表示。2008年，在美國對外關係委員有關達爾富爾地區公平性的會議上，克里斯多夫和朱莉共同發言。

儘管朱莉是在玩弄名人的把戲，但這總是出於更爲高尚的目的，而非爲了個人的名譽或私慾。她新誕生的雙胞胎照片，賣出了1400萬美元，這筆錢捐給了朱莉—皮特基金。那些和她共事過的人表示，她的表現毫無明星的架子，並且非常專業。

人們還是堅持認爲，她年輕時的古怪行徑（她的父親曾聲淚俱下地說，她有“嚴重的精神疾病”）並未遠去，然而她那不安於現狀的個性卻最終發揮了積極的作用。

如今，朱莉又一次轉變了自己的身份，成爲了一名導演。她的最新作品《堅不可摧》是其指導的第二部電影，講述了一位二戰英雄的故事。這部電影也被視作是2015年奧斯卡獎的有力競爭者，不過，在收穫另一座奧斯卡小金人之前，朱莉還是需要前往白金漢宮，接受她的勳章。