Next came Shark Tale, an animation where Will Smith's funky fish took credit for the accidental death of the son of shark mobster Robert De Niro. Now famous, Smith would attract the amorous, glamorous Angelina (a fish called Lola, of course) who'd tempt him to betray his long-time gal Rene Zellweger. Critics would complain that the film's welter of references to the likes of Jaws and The Godfather would put it beyond the ken of most kids. Nevertheless, without challenging the monolithic success of Shrek, it was still a big hit.
After Shark Tale would come a real oddity, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. Inspired by 1950s sci-fi comics, this would see a crazed German scientist kidnap the world's greatest minds and then send giant robots rampaging through the streets of New York City. Teaming up to foil this megalomaniac would be Jude Law's freelance buccaneer, Gwyneth Paltrow's scoop-hungry hack and Angelina, a sexy, piratical pilot who may well have caused the break-up of an earlier relationship between Law and Paltrow. Really, you couldn't blame him.
Sky Captain, an FX marvel that had seen the actors working mostly against green screens, was a cinematic wonder, but not a hit. Much the same could be said of Jolie's next venture, Oliver Stone's epic Alexander. This saw her as Olympias, mother of Colin Farrell's great conqueror. Married to a drunken Val Kilmer, she's beaten and banished, but returns when her young son acquires the crown of Macedon, henceforth acting as his inspiration as he subjugates the nations. It was an odd movie, glorious in its scope, thrilling in its battle sequences, but undermined by the complexity of its message and its shy handling of Alexander's bisexuality. Indeed, it was undermined to the extent that, having cost $150 million to make, its US box office takings stalled at $34 million. Ouch.
Generally slating the movie, the critics paid special attention to the eastern European accent Angelina adopted. Fans would say this was a tad unfair - after all, Macedonia borders on Bulgaria which, like Russia, touches the Black Sea. She wasn't THAT far off. But her career did not suffer. Branching out artistically, she'd move on to The Fever, directed by Vanessa Redgrave's son Carlo Gabriel Nero. This was an HBO take on Wallace Shawn's play about a middle-class woman's political awakening. Ambitiously switching from action to filmed theatre to into-camera monologues, it would see Redgrave educated in the world's political hot-spots by journalist Michael Moore and Jolie's angry, pistol-packing revolutionary. Jolie would then take on another major release, 2005's Mr And Mrs Smith, where she and Brad Pitt starred as a bored couple whose marriage is both stimulated and endangered when they discover they're both secret assassins, now unfortunately hired to kill one another. Even before its release the film would cause something of a stir. Firstly, extra shoots meant that Jolie could not carry the Olympic torch through Athens - her work for the United Nations High Commission For Refugees was to have seen her represent the world's refugees. And there were the inevitable rumours of sexual misbehaviour. With Pitt and Jennifer Aniston the world's most famous couple and Jolie Hollywood's most notorious femme fatale, the tabloids, understandably, went bananas. For once they had good reason.
Mr And Mrs Smith was, understandably, a massive hit, taking $186 million at the US box office. Much of the press surrounding it, though, concerned the stars themselves, the couple eventually being forced to ban questions about their relationship. For a full year they remained tight-lipped. Pictures of them together sporadically appeared, one set making upwards of $500,000. Pitt officially split from Aniston, divorcing in 2005. Only in 2006 would they come clean, with Pitt adopting Maddox and Zaharah Marley, an Ethiopian girl Jolie had herself adopted the year before. By the end of May they would have a child of their own, Shiloh Nouvel being born in Namibia. With Pitt now helping Jolie in her ambassadorial duties, it came as no surprise when they agreed to sell exclusive photos of the new arrival and donate all proceeds to charity.
Charitable work and motherhood would now take up much of Jolie's time. Having in 2004 been made an Honorary Citizen of Cambodia due to her efforts in the region, she'd visit post-earthquake Pakistan and involve herself in the huge Live 8 concert. She'd also address the World Economic Forum, highlighting the plights of Darfur, Afghanistan and Nepal. But there would be the occasional cinema release. 2006 would see the long-anticipated premiere of The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro. This would tell the story of the early years of the CIA by following the career of operative Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon, as he's recruited before WW2 then becomes a player in the Cold War. Jolie would deliver a highly dramatic turn as Wilson's wife Clover, first jumping him at a picnic and getting pregnant, then becoming estranged as war separates them, loneliness eventually driving her to cynicism and alcoholism. With an all-star cast featuring John Turturro, Michael Gambon and William Hurt, the movie would be both entertainment and history lesson. So would Jolie's next effort, Beowulf, where Robert Zemeckis told the old Norse legend using the same performance-capture animation technique he'd employed so successfully with The Polar Express. Playing one of history's most notorious female monsters, Jolie would be joined by John Malkovich, Anthony Hopkins, Crispin Glover and Ray Winstone.
Still struggling with herself, and still publicly discussing her pleasures and pains (as well as her ever-increasing charity work - covered in part in her 2003 book Notes From My Travels), Jolie is one of Hollywood's more complicated characters. She may have found happiness with Brad Pitt but, as of 2006, she hadn't spoken to her father in four years. She's both a sex object and an international diplomat, an action star and an Oscar-winning thespian, a constant contradiction. Alongside the Japanese sign for death, Billy Bob, H, two Native American symbols, a dragon and a black cross, she has marked on her body a Tennessee Williams line "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", and "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - What nourishes me also destroys me. Let's hope she continues to benefit from the nourishment. And the cage.
Biography by Dominic Wills
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