Jolie, the daughter of actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, was born in Los Angeles, California and is of French descent. As a child she dreamed of becoming a funeral director. She attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute from the age of 11 and later completed a degree in film at New York University.

Jolie has been long estranged from her father, actor Jon Voight, though a reconciliation was attempted by his appearing with her in '. In the October 2004 issue of Premiere Magazine, Jolie indicated that she was no longer interested in pursuing a relationship with her father. Soon after he exploited a claim that she has "serious emotional problems" on Access Hollywood, she legally dropped Voight as her last name.

Jolie has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees since 2001, and frequently travels to far-flung countries to draw attention to the plight of people in Third World nations. In 2003, she published Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries chronicling her early work with the U.N.. In a January 2005 interview with Reuters, Jolie criticized fellow actors for not being committed enough in helping others, and stated at she gives one-third of her income to charitable organizations.

Jolie was also one of the first celebrities to accept an invitation to be one of the bearers of the Olympic Torch during the 2004 Olympic Games, though she was ultimately unable to participate due to filming commitments.

In the fall of 2004, it was reported that Jolie has started proceedings to adopt another child, this time from Russia.

Around the same time, Lauryn Galindo, the Hawaii-based adoption facilitator whose services Jolie had used to adopt Maddox, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to visa fraud and money laundering charges. She had been falsifying records of children to be adopted in visa applications to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and several of the children she placed had not been abandoned at all but were enticed away or bought from their birth families. It does not appear that Maddox was among them, although the investigation is continuing.

Besides her acting and humanitarian endeavors, Jolie also worked as a professional model in London, New York and Los Angeles and appeared in numerous music videos including those of Meat Loaf, Lenny Kravitz, and the Rolling Stones.

As of early 2005, Jolie has not had a substantial hit film in several years, with several of her movies, such as Alexander, Sky Captain, and the second Lara Croft film being major box office disappointments. She is also the voice of Lola in Shark Tale. Nonetheless her exotic looks and acting talent still make her one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses.

In early 2005, Jolie found herself at the centre of a well-publicized Hollywood "scandal" when she was accused of being the "other woman" in the marital break-up of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The allegation was that she and Pitt had started an affair during filming of the yet-to-be-released spy comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, something she denies.

In March of 2005, Angelina Jolie was named the sexiest woman in the world by FHM magazine out of 15 million worldwide votes.

She now lives full-time in Buckinghamshire, UK.