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New mom Angelina Jolie rocks the 'Cradle of Life'
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY
NEW YORK ¡ª Wild child Angelina Jolie has a new man in her life, one who has made her settle down and rethink her dark and risky ways. (Related item: Angelina Jolie, tattoo diarist.)
New mom Jolie makes stability her game.
He's a toddler named Maddox, an orphan she adopted in Cambodia, and whose arrival, some have speculated, helped precipitate the end of her passionate and eccentric marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton.
"I live for my son," she says. "I want to love. I want to be a good parent."
Jolie, 28, has earned a complex dark-angel reputation by being brutally honest about her turbulent teen years and readily revealing private moments that most stars try to hide.
But now she's showing off a softer, maternal side, even as she is back kicking serious butt as Lara Croft, video-game vixen turned big-screen adventuress. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, the sequel to 2001's hit movie, opens July 25.
Much has changed in Jolie's life since the first Tomb Raider. She was appointed a goodwill ambassador for refugees by the United Nations. She adopted Maddox after falling in love with Cambodia, where the first Raider was filmed.
Not long after the baby came into their lives, Jolie abruptly filed for divorce from Thornton. The couple who had oozed sexual energy all over Hollywood red carpets for two years (she even wore his blood in a vial around her neck and had his name tattooed on her arm) were suddenly kaput last summer.
Then came a very public squabble with her father, actor Jon Voight, who tearfully told Access Hollywood that Jolie had "serious mental problems."
Jolie now seems reluctant to explore the dangerous persona that she says no longer exists, and one that was highly misunderstood in the first place. The actress, who used to revel in stories about knife play during sex and her fascination with mortuary science, is a little more careful these days. She would rather talk about how her life has been changed by Maddox and her work with the United Nations.
But without her troubled past, would Jolie have been so convincing in roles such as the heroin-addicted model in HBO's Gia or a mental patient in 1999's Girl, Interrupted, which won her an Oscar as best supporting actress?
A bright and beautiful child of Hollywood, Jolie saw her parents divorce when she was a toddler. (Her mother is French actress Marcheline Bertrand.)
Jolie graduated from Beverly Hills High at 16 and trained with legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg before her exotic looks (she's also of American Indian descent) landed her modeling gigs.
But she struggled during her late teens and early 20s. She has said she dabbled in drugs and has talked about being a "cutter" ¡ª an emotional condition in which girls cut their bodies with knives and razor blades.
All that is in the past, she says. "It's that middle stage when you might not know what life means that is the dangerous time. But I don't have that anymore. I used to when I was younger."
Jolie was largely estranged from her father while growing up. But the two reconciled long enough to team up on the first Tomb Raider, in which Voight played Lara Croft's father.
Then came the Access interview last summer. The actor said he had tried to get his daughter help and had failed. In response, Jolie issued a statement saying that it was "unhealthy" to be around her father, especially now that she had a son. She says she no longer speaks to Voight, who does not appear in the new Tomb Raider.
"I know nothing about him. I know nothing about his motivation, what he is, who he is or what he's about. I have close relationships with my mother and brother (Jamie Haven). I have very good friends, and I'm very blessed. But some relationships didn't work out. Some people don't have everything. They don't have both parents."
Nor does she speak to Thornton, the oft-married star who appeared to be her soul mate.
Is she sad about the breakup? Obviously, she says. "A marriage ended, a friendship is gone." But, she says, "my first marriage (to Jonny Lee Miller) ended badly. This was not a difficult divorce."
A self-proclaimed "sexual person" who had a relationship with Foxfire co-star Jenny Shimizu, Jolie says she isn't dating now and isn't interested. And Nicolas Cage is a "nice guy, but we're not dating," she says with a laugh, rolling her eyes at the latest tabloid claims.
"My life is very full, and I'm sure at some point I'll miss sex, and I'll end up having a lover again. But not right now."
Her life is much more simple: movies, the United Nations and her son. During her short stay at a Central Park hotel to promote her new movie, Jolie schedules time between interviews with Maddox, whom she calls Mad, with great attention paid to an arranged play date. Jolie, who has homes in England and Cambodia but not the USA, lights up on the subject of motherhood.
She wants to adopt more children and says with a laugh that the wild child may become Hollywood's next Mia Farrow. "Or Josephine Baker. I like that better," she says, referring to another performer who adopted roomfuls of children from different cultures.
"Everybody jokes that whenever I go to a country, be prepared, in case I come home (with a new child). I want to have a home that represents the world as I see it, which is children with all different religions from different parts of the world."
Maddox, who will be 2 in August, travels with Jolie to her movie sets (she's in Montreal now, filming Taking Lives) and when she visits refugee camps for the U.N. The Tomb Raider sequel was one of the first films she made as a mother.
"She's a very proud mom, and it was very sweet," says Cradle director Jan De Bont. "It was a side of her I had never imagined." Still, De Bont says, "there's roughness about her that will never change. It's her edginess and attitude."
It's that edgy quest for danger that had Jolie doing most of her own stunts in Cradle. And if it's a hit, it will mean a return to blockbuster form for the actress after two flops, 2001's Original Sin and 2002's Life or Something Like It.
The Cradle story puts Jolie on speeding jet skis, off-road motorcycles and jeeps. She sky-dives into a moving vehicle, scales city high-rises, and speed-rappels down a 300-foot cliff ¡ª upside-down. An accomplished equestrian, Jolie also mounts a racing horse sidesaddle while shooting a high-powered weapon. "Of course, Lara's horse had to be a stallion and independent," Jolie says. "But when we finally got it together, me and that horse had perfect harmony."
Jolie says she "was always a tomboy as a kid and liked to run around, but I hadn't been that physical since the first Tomb Raider."
The disciplined training "kicked me into a certain place, and it's a good place. It's good to get dirty and jump around. It helped my focus."
She hasn't been back in the gym since Cradle wrapped, but you'd never guess it from her slender 5-foot-7 figure. Her fitness routine? "I chase around a toddler all day."
While Lara Croft's (and Jolie's) bodacious bod were eye-popping in the first film, careful observers might note a subtle deflation this time around. The bust-boosting bra, which enhanced Jolie's assets from a 36 C to a D-cup, is gone in Cradle. (In the video game, Croft is a double-D.)
Jolie's bust line was enhanced in the first film because "that's what everyone wanted. We had to do that in the first one. Now we're able to make it without it," which suits her just fine.
"This one, this is all me, with good, normal undergarments. (Lara) looks sexier now. I like her body better now."
Besides, she adds with a sly smile, "I'm not a fan of extremely large breasts."
Angelina rocks 'Cradle'NaN/NaN/NaN NaN:NaN PMBy Karen Thomas, USA TODAYNEW YORKNew mom Jolie makes stability her game.--
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