Biography for Angelina Jolie 3

The emotional extravagance of these parts, added to her own confusion and pain, made living with Jolie an impossibility. She was breaking down and Miller could take no more. The couple split, Jolie living alone in Manhattan, getting her head together, and attending film classes at NYU. Now notorious for her candid quotes, her name stayed in the papers. The sexuality of Gia had got tongues wagging, and Jolie had made them wag some more by admitting to bi-sexuality, and a relationship with actress Jenny Shimizu.

Now came the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, about two air traffic controllers who engage in macho conflict. John Cusack was one, the other was Billy Bob Thornton, acclaimed director, writer and star of Sling Blade. Jolie played Thornton's wife, an extremely sexy sort who sends the guys crazy and sleeps with Cusack. The film was excellent. More importantly for Jolie, she fell for Thornton, 15 years her senior, who proceeded to dump his longtime girlfriend Laura Dern. The pair became infamous for their salacious quotes, Thornton admitting that he liked to wear Jolie's underwear, even to work, as it made him feel close to her. Actually, their quotes were often rude, but clearly loving.

Jolie was about to become a huge star. Winona Ryder has claimed that her character in Girl, Interrupted could have been her as a young girl. But Jolie's character, Lisa Rowe - insanely ebullient then horribly depressed, hating but needing some form of structure to her life, even an institution - really WAS Jolie. Stealing the show entirely, she won the Oscar, and herein lies a sweet tale. At the time filming Original Sin down in Mexico, Jolie flew to the Oscar ceremony (she'd attended before, age 12 and all glammed up in lace and pearls, with her dad), won, then flew straight back, arriving at 4.30 am and going straight to sleep. Suddenly, she was awoken by a mariachi band, hired by co-star Antonio Banderas and director Michael Cristofer. Stumbling from her trailer, she was handed a single rose by every member of the crew, many of whom, along with Cristofer, had worked on Gia and, remembering her at her lowest ebb, wished to recognise this moment of triumph. In the press, meanwhile, her victory was quickly overshadowed by freakish reports that she was having an affair with her own brother. They must have assumed she'd try anything once. This is a big part of the Jolie phenomenon - she has a searing reputation for being sexually voracious and promiscuous, yet says she's slept with only a tiny handful of people.

After Girl, Interrupted came the psycho-thriller The Bone Collector, where she aided a bedridden Denzel Washington in his pursuit of a killer, then Gone In 60 Seconds, where Jolie played Sarah "Sway" Wayland, ex-girlfriend of super-car-thief Nicolas Cage. She didn't have much to do but be charismatic, which she managed with ease - though she did look thin and drawn, something noted by Cristofer when Jolie moved directly from Gone In 60 Seconds on to the set of Original Sin. Based on Cornell Woolrich's Waltz Into Darkness, this would be a steamy bodice-ripper where she played a mail order bride for Banderas' coffee planter in 1900s Cuba, a bride who turns out to be dominating, manipulative and thoroughly untrustworthy. It was a wonder he didn't mail her straight back.