Issue date: June 11, 2000

In this article:
Her first marriage
Is she contemplating ... motherhood?
Angelina Jolie Photo Gallery
Keep up with Tomb Raider and cyberbabe Lara Croft news

Oscar-winning actress ANGELINA JOLIE says she's putting her wild past behind her. Finding true love, she says, has "transformed" her.

By Stephanie Mansfield

Check out our Angelina Jolie Photo Gallery this week!

Jolie, cigarette dangling from her plump, pouty lips, is nursing a cappuccino and conducting the interview topless (believe it or not). Her pale skin is artfully decorated with a revolving array of tattoos. She has an odd, almost digitally enhanced body -- womanly and waifish -- with full breasts, a tiny waist, skinny arms and long legs. She's also slightly giddy, trying desperately to remain circumspect about her scandalous affair with Thornton, 44, who left his fiancée, actress Laura Dern, for the 25-year-old Jolie.

"I still don't know if I'm the best person to be in his life, to live side by side," Jolie says. "I love him that much. I didn't want him as much as I wanted him to have a good life."

Apparently, she's now convinced she is indeed the best person to be in Thornton's life, while still haunted by an old insecurity. "Not being pure and perfect. Am I a good person? Am I a sinner? Can I be a wife? A mom?"

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Hollywood's card-carrying wild child -- obviously contemplating motherhood -- is now Thornton's fifth wife. He has a daughter from a first marriage and two sons from another union. Weeks after he won an Oscar for Sling Blade, his fourth wife, Pietra, accused him of beating her. More recently, Thornton -- who believes he is the reincarnation of Ben Franklin -- admitted to overcoming alcohol abuse and an eating disorder.

Jolie, meanwhile, is promoting her big-budget summer movie, Gone in 60 Seconds with Nicolas Cage. All frenetic verbal energy, she inserts "like" into almost every sentence. She's trying to gain weight. (Wags wonder: Could she already be pregnant?) "People come up to you when you're really skinny and say, 'You look great!' I was, like, sick. 'I'm dying, but thank you.' I'm just glad I'm getting my a-- back."

When asked if the Arkansas-born Thornton, nearly 20 years her senior, is a father figure, she dismisses the question and shakes her head. Given the fact that her own father, actor Jon Voight, abandoned her as a baby, it would not be unusual for Jolie to be drawn to older men, especially those in the same profession.

he actress, a fiercely independent woman who has lived on her own since age 16, says she's in love, for the first and last time. There's been a seismic shift in her persona. Gone is the darkly cynical, openly bisexual rebel who jumped into a hotel swimming pool in her beaded Randolph Duke gown after the 1999 Golden Globes.

Jolie ("If I wasn't an actor, there's no way I wouldn't be in a mental institution") also was a fan of self-mutilation and titillated interviewers with tales of using knives in sex play.

Could her new marriage be a stabilizing influence? "I was sure I'd never be a good wife or mother. I wasn't a great wife before. But I finally came to a place where I hope I can make somebody happy."

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At age 20, Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller. They met on the set of Hackers. At their wedding, she sported tight black rubber pants and a white shirt on which she'd written Miller's name in her own blood. They separated a year later.

There were rumors of substance abuse and erratic behavior. Observers say that she immersed herself in the role of the doomed supermodel Gia for the 1998 HBO movie and that her Oscar-winning turn as the manipulative sociopath Lisa in last winter's Girl, Interrupted was eerily close to the bone. Which leads the actress to address what she sees as the biggest misconception about her. "People think I'm tough and mean," she says. But she's different now. "It takes a lot for me to be soft. And I like being soft."

Allowing herself to experience passionate love for the first time -- what she calls an "animal hunger" --has transformed her.

"I've never known what it was to be jealous, obsessive. Wanting to talk constantly. Now I don't like being by myself. When I was friends with this person, I was worried if I was good enough. Never if he was good enough."

One of her tattoos is a quote. "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages." Did she feel she wasn't worthy of being loved? "I didn't think I was," she says softly. "I didn't deserve it." But the stars have aligned, in more ways than one. And the beauty of it, in her words, is "falling in love with a friend."

"I'm suddenly very OK. If I'm the person he loves, then I'm all right. He accepts me for who I am, and now I do. I used to feel that my work was why I was alive. I wasn't born to love another person. Now I feel there is something more special. I used to not be afraid to die. Now I'm so happy living. I don't want to miss a moment."

Weeks after she accepted the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role in Girl, Interrupted, wearing Morticia-like black hair extensions and causing tongues to wag over her obvious physical attraction for older brother James Haven Voight ("He's the love of my life," she gushes), Jolie and Thornton, whose mother is a professional psychic, were snapped by the paparazzi. They had starred together in the 1999 film Pushing Tin, playing an air traffic controller and his much younger, alcoholic wife.

Director Mike Newell recalled that Laura Dern had visited Thornton on the set and that he and Jolie had shared a low-key friendship. Newell was shocked by the news of the elopement, but saw in Jolie an extremely focused, albeit offbeat, talent. "She is someone who would have fit in during Paris in the 1920s," he says. "Very, very unordinary."

The first thing she did was get a tattoo on her biceps, inscribed "Billy Bob."

"She knows what she wants, and she goes out and gets it," says Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced Gone in 60 Seconds. He adds: "She's getting a terrific guy."

olie, who was raised by her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, after her parents' divorce, continued to pursue an acting career after graduating from high school. Her godmother is actress Jacqueline Bisset. Friends say Jolie is an old soul. "There's something behind her eyes that says, 'I've been there, done that,' " Bruckheimer says.

Now Jolie considers Thornton a mate for life, or at least the near future. "When you meet somebody, [then] you suddenly see it's kind of destiny," she says.

"In the last six months, I went through something really heavy. I got really scared. I'm really appreciating life. And I'm seeing the possibilities. What my career has allowed me. I suddenly became much more public. It scared me. I didn't want to be different. And I'm not. I'm fiercely like everybody, so I've decided to own that."

In the end, she credits Thornton for that insight. "With everything I've gone through in my life, this person took faith in me," she says. "When a lot of people judged me."

And, most important, "he doesn't think I'm crazy."

Contributing Editor Stephanie Mansfield last wrote about actress Sarah Jessica Parker for the magazine.

Photos by Julie Dennis Brothers for USA WEEKEND

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GameSpot UK
This gaming site, in honor of the Tomb Raider games, has more links that lead to Lara Croft than you can shake a mouse at.
http://www.gamespot.co.uk/pc.gamespot/action/tombraid3_uk/11.html
Send a GameSpot Lara-o-gram
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/cgi-bin/webogram-v2/webgram.cgi?action=build&step=1&area=lara

Tomb Raider
Don't forget the Eidos official site. Download demos or plan your Tomb Raider GameBoy purchase.
www.tombraider.com

Lara Croft's Photo Album
A fan site with several high-quality images of cyber Lara Croft, live-model Lara Croft and cartoon Lara Croft.
http://underworld.fortunecity.com/bulletproof/801/photos.htm

Mr. Showbiz
Don't forget the actress behind the movie-version of Lara Croft: Angelina Jolie
http://mrshowbiz.go.com/people/angelinajolie/index.html

Lara Croft Page at Adventure Place
A gallery of Angelina looking a lot like a good Croft candidate.
http://network.ctimes.net/cb/lara/JolieGallery.html
-- Or, enter yourself in the Lara Look-alike contest.
http://network.ctimes.net/cb/lookalikes/summer.html

Web Ring
Need more? Hit up the 119 sites listed with the Tomb Raider Web ring.
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=tombraider;list