Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography (51 page)

Angie’s time with Billy Bob Thornton, her involvement with the United Nations, and her eventual adoption of a Cambodian orphan, Maddox, in 2002, marked a turning point in her life. I would particularly like to thank Ingrid Earle for her insights and enthusiasm in helping to uncover sources, as well as Rachel Flanagan, Heather Hope Howard, Melissa
Howard, Sheila McCombe, and Penny Thornton.
Levity
director Ed Solomon’s story about Billy Bob Thornton, Pat Boone, and the flight to Namibia captured the actor/musician’s enduring quirkiness.

With regard to Angie’s work with the United Nations, the Honorable Joseph Melrose, former United States ambassador to Sierra Leone, was very helpful in describing her first UN tour, while career aid worker Annick Gillard Bailetti described in detail life in refugee camps. Joanna Piucci, manager, Messengers of Peace & Special Projects Advocacy & Special Events, Department of Public Information at the United Nations in New York, and Patrick Hayford, director of the Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA), explained the role of a Goodwill Ambassador. Angie’s observations about her visits to refugee camps in her book
Notes from My Travels
(Pocket Books, 2003) provide the perspective of an innocent abroad to the problems of the planet, while the discourse by her sometime traveling companion Jeffrey Sachs, titled
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
(Penguin Books, 2008), gives a more scholarly outlook.

On the vexed matter of adoption, I have consulted with a number of sources both specifically involved with Angie’s adoptions and with the general difficulty of Westerners adopting children from developing countries. Adoption facilitator Catherine Politte was most helpful, as was Kate Adie, whose book
Nobody’s Child
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2005) is highly informative. In relation to Operation Broken Hearts, the case against Seattle International Adoptions, which facilitated the adoption of Maddox, I would like to thank U.S. Assistant Attorney Jim Lord, who prosecuted, and Lorie Dankers, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle, which investigated the case. I consulted research papers by Kevin Browne and others on international adoptions and orphans in Europe and the so-called Madonna effect.

Fresh information and insights into the now-notorious interview Jon Voight gave about his daughter in 2002 were provided by TV presenter Pat O’Brien, though it is a pity his memories of Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary didn’t make the cut. Another time. Pastor Ken Anderson helped place this public melodrama in human context, while actor Nathan Lee Graham and others who wished to remain in the background walked me through the fallout. The reissue of Hal Ashby’s
Lookin’ to Get Out
in
June 2009 provided another setting to witness this estrangement. Nick Dawson’s biography
Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel
(The University Press of Kentucky, 2009) had eerie parallels with Angie’s own story.

Once Brad Pitt moseyed into town like some Wild West gunslinger, shutters were slammed shut, eyes averted, and Hollywood folk circled the wagons. It will, however, be clear that I have managed to ride shotgun and talk on a background basis with people who worked on
Mr. & Mrs. Smith,
who moved in the Malibu circle of Brad and Jennifer Aniston, and shuttled between Davos and Washington as part of the international humanitarian circuit. They know who they are and my thanks to them. Nancy Aniston’s self-serving autobiography,
From Mother and Daughter to Friends
(Prometheus Books, 1999), makes the perfect case for why children should be allowed to divorce their parents.

The extraordinary invasion of the African country of Namibia by Team Jolie for the birth of Shiloh was well described by the combatants, some of whom lived to fight another day. My thanks to Barbara Jones, Cornall De Villiers, Steve Butler, and Donna Collins. Marina Hyde’s book
Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy
(Harvill Secker, 2009) provided covering fire.

In the 24/7 tabloid hysteria that is the world of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, it is difficult to hear the quiet voices of reason, so my thanks to Mich Ahern, Alan Hamm, John Bell, Sharon Feinstein, Tim Miles, and others for calming the cacophony. My thanks to John Trudell for his observations about Angie’s luminous personality, while Bill Day’s insights into Marcheline Bertrand’s death and his subsequent meeting with her daughter and son, James, provide a telling bookend to the drama of her life. Rich Ting revealed what it was like to work with Angie as the tabloids yelled outside.

In understanding such a complex and sometimes troubled character, the professional insights of psychologist Iris Martin and contemporary psychoanalyst Dr. Franziska De George, as well as the observations of interventionist Candy Finnigan and Dr. David Kipper, have been invaluable in appreciating Angie’s personality. My thanks to them all, as well as to other professional care workers who chose to remain anonymous.

On this journey a detailed timeline has been the rope that has helped guide me through the fog of words and stay on the path to understanding.
Time and again a clear chronology of Angie’s life has provided insight, and I would like to thank my researcher Bronwen Tawse for her dogged work, Peter Bahlawanian for technical services, as well as Gabriella Kantor for emerging with truffles from unlikely places. While Dr. Johnson, the pioneer of biography, might not have approved, Facebook proved an essential research tool. Who knew?

At St. Martin’s Press my editor, Hope Dellon, performed miracles with the manuscript, showing a deft and sensitive touch, publisher Sally Richardson bravely backed a hunch, and publicity director John Murphy was, as ever, full of brio and boundless enthusiasm. Thanks, too, to my agent, Steve Troha, for getting a green light for the project.

Give it up as well to the king and queen of bling, Bruce and Lori Halprin, for their generous hospitality at their Calabasas palace, to Aaron at the Sunset Marquis hotel for mixing the drinks, and the Dave Matthews Band for providing the sound track.

Finally, my undying appreciation to my partner, Tracy Nesdoly, for her indefatigable research, her smart and telling insights, and the bonniest of bon mots. Just don’t mention the timeline.

As they say in the movies, it’s been emotional.

—Andrew Morton

New York     

April 12, 2010

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Academy Award(s)

Jolie’s

Access Hollywood

Ackerman, Dan

Acuff, Roy

Adams, Don

Adoptive Families

Adventures of a Suburban Boy

Affleck, Ben

Afterglow

Age

AIDS/HIV

Aiello, Danny

Alexander

Alice and Viril

The All-American Boy

Allen, Steve

Allen, Wade

All the Pretty Horses

All Tribes Foundation

Along Came Polly

Alpert, Randy

“Alta Marea (Don’t Dream It’s Over),”

Amanpour, Christiane

Amazonia

Anaconda

Anderson, Gillian

Anderson, Ken

Anderson, Rachel

Anderson, Rosie

Angarola, Marianne Follis

Angela and Viril

“Angelina,”

Angelina, George

Angelina, Marie-Louise

“Angel of the Morning,”

Angland, Carrie

Angland, Connie

Aniston, Jennifer

background of

Pitt, Brad’s, relationship with

Aniston, John

Aniston, Nancy

Annan, Kofi

Annis, Francesca

Ann-Margret

Anton (boyfriend of Jolie)

“Anybody Seen My Baby?,”

Arab Children Health Congress

Arkin, Alan

Armageddon

Aronson, Jane

Arquette, Patricia

Arquette, Rosanna

Arthur, Karen

Ashby, Hal

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Astaire, Fred

Atias, Elan

Atlas Shrugged

Austen, Rosemary

Austin, Jeff

The Avengers

Avnet, Jon

Babel

The Baby Dance

Bachardy, Don

Back Stage

Bad Santa

BAFTA

Baker, Josephine

Banderas, Antonio

Barra, Allen

Barrie, J. M.

Barrymore, Drew

Bateman, James.
See
Gibson, Henry

Bauman, Richard

Beatty, Belinha

Beatty, Ned

Beatty, Warren

de Becker, Gavin

Bekmambetov, Timur

Bendewald, Andrea

Benét, Eric

Benton, Barbi

Bergan, Ronald

Berg, David

Bergman, Anne

Berry, Halle

Bertrand, Debbie.
See
Martin, Debbie Bertrand

Bertrand, Elke

Bertrand, George

Bertrand, Lois Gouwens (grandmother of Jolie)

Bertrand, Marcheline (mother of Jolie)

career of

childhood of

Day, Bill’s, relationship with

death of

divorce of

family rifts and

illness of

Jagger, Mick, fascination by

Jolie’s children and

Jolie’s management by

marriage of

miscarriages by

Pacino, Al’s, relationship with

production company by

Trudell, John’s, relationship with

Bertrand, Raleigh “Rollie” (uncle of Jolie)

Bertrand, Rolland (grandfather of Jolie)

illness/death of

Beverly Hills High School, California

Beyond Borders

Biskind, Peter

Bisset, Jacqueline

BlackBook

Black, Jack

Blanchett, Cate

Blueberry (model)

Bone Collector

Bone Days

Bono