The real Angie: new biography's explosive claims

Published Jul 29, 2010

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By Daniel Bates and Sara Nathan

She is known for a rebellious streak that led to drug-taking, family drama and a very complicated love life.

But Angelina Jolie's wild ways are the result of her mother abandoning her when she was a baby, an explosive new biography claims.

Marcheline Bertrand banished her one-year-old daughter to a separate apartment in their Los Angeles home and left her in the care of staff for two years, according to the book.

Bertrand was allegedly furious that Jolie's father, the actor Jon Voight, had had an affair, and took it out on their daughter because she looked like him.

The biography claims that she didn't accept the little girl back into her life until she was three, and says the episode left a deep psychological scar on Jolie.

The allegations are made in Andrew Morton's unauthorised biography of the 35-year-old Tomb Raider star, which is due to be published in the US this week.

Morton, who is best known for his controversial biography of Princess Diana, also claims that Mick Jagger pursued Jolie for two years while still married to Jerry Hall.

The author also suggests she "stole" current husband Brad Pitt from Jennifer Aniston, and claims she used Maddox, the Cambodian child she adopted, as "the bait and the alibi" to lure Pitt away while they were filming Mr And Mrs Smith.

At the time, Pitt was keen to start a family, and the promise of a large brood with Jolie was the key factor in him leaving Aniston, the book says.

But it is the claims about Jolie's family background which are the most startling and, so Morton suggests, explain much of Jolie's wildchild behaviour later in life.

Jolie was born in 1975, and the following year Voight had a passionate affair with actress Stacey Pickren.

He split up with Bertrand and she "took her pain out on Angelina", according to former caretaker Krisann Morel.

Jolie was raised by a changing guard of babysitters for two years. Home became like an "ivory tower", with Jolie remaining on the fifth floor while her mother lived on the second.

According to Ms Morel, Bertrand "separated herself from Angie because she looked a lot like Jon".

The relationship between mother and daughter never recovered, and remained unconventional at best.

At the age of 14 Jolie was dating a boy named only as Anton and, at her mother's request, he moved in with the family so she could monitor them.

Bertrand gave up the master bedroom with its huge Chinese wedding bed and moved into a smaller bedroom, enabling the teenage couple to share a room.

According to Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography, the effect of this fractured upbringing was to send Jolie off the rails.

She became a heavy heroin and cocaine user - and in a series of disturbing pictures, taken at the nadir of her drug use and included in the book, she poses almost naked, wearing a dog collar and looking pale and gaunt.

She developed a reputation as a party animal and had a string of affairs with men and women, including a notorious fling with Ethan Hawke while he was dating Uma Thurman.

She was married twice before Pitt, first to Trainspotting actor Johnny Lee Miller, when she supposedly walked down the aisle in black rubber trousers and a white shirt which had the groom's name scrawled on it in her blood.

Her second union was actor Billy Bob Thornton, but she became infuriated at his independence.

Such was her frustration that, at her own request, she checked into the neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA Medical Centre for 72 hours of monitoring.

The book also describes the time she supposedly hired a hitman to murder her.

The would-be-killer was not persuaded she wanted to do it and told her to think about it for a month, which she did, and changed her mind.

Towards the end of her mother's life, the two achieved a semblance of normality, in part caused by the birth of her children. She has also attempted a rapprochement with Voight, although relations are still frosty.

In an attempt to divert attention from the book, Jolie was yesterday in South Korea in her role as goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Having reinvented herself as a devoted mother with a six-strong brood of children, the actress will be keen to move on past the claims set out in Morton's book.

But Morton said: "I think my biography will genuinely change the way people view her - and the way she sees herself." - Daily Mail

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