My looks getting better with age: Angelina Jolie

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Although they are tucked up safely nearby, Angelina Jolie is missing her brood. Her partner (that would be Brad Pitt, of course) is on baby-sitting duty looking after their six children, including four-month-old twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline, while she is in work mode, giving a few select interviews before attending the glitzy New York premiere of her latest film, Changeling.

‘I can’t stand being away from them for too long,’ she says. ‘They’re part of me and I’m part of them. Actually, they’re upstairs – I’m surprised you can’t hear them.’

‘Upstairs’ is the sumptuous penthouse suite of the luxurious Manhattan hotel where we meet. Angelina arrives bang on time, looking every perfectly groomed inch the glamorous Hollywood star. ‘Oh yeah, but you should have seen me a couple of hours ago when I was organising breakfast,’ she laughs.

Angelina as Christine Collins in Changeling

The image of cornflakes in her extra-long eyelashes is a hard one to conjure up right now. She’s a vision of composed cool – a mane of dark brown hair tumbles on to her shoulders and a tight-fitting, cream Ralph Lauren crew-neck jumper emphasises how quickly her figure has regained its wow factor since the birth of the twins in July.

The risky, dangerous sexuality that characterised her in the past – with talk of bisexuality and a fascination with knives – certainly isn’t on display today. The tattoos (nine at the last count) are hidden under demure cashmere sleeves and she looks like a particularly beautiful Manhattan mum on her way to meet well-heeled friends for brunch.

‘How did I get my figure back? Well, breast-feeding for a start. That and running around after six kids,’ she says. Indeed, there are pictures of her breast-feeding, taken by Brad, on the cover of an American magazine, and another publication reportedly paid $14 million for exclusive photos of the newborn twins, such is the frenzied interest in brand Brangelina.

Wherever they travel, the kids go with them – sons Maddox, seven, and Pax, four, and daughter Zahara, three, who were all adopted; their biological daughter, two-year-old Shiloh, and now the twins, too.

‘It was a crazy amount of money,’ she agrees, referring to the baby pictures deal. ‘But look, we’re using the money for our charitable foundation and in that way it does some good.’

This is typical of Angelina, a woman who is prepared to wield her celebrity like a club if she believes it will help. Her work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR ) has taken her into some of the most dangerous parts of the world. And the Jolie-Pitt Foundation has bankrolled projects as diverse as providing legal aid for refugee children, a $2 million donation for a clinic in Ethiopia and backing for a wildlife conservation project in Cambodia (the birth place of Maddox).

‘You should never help somebody out of pity, or to get Brownie points in heaven,’ she says. ‘You should genuinely find joy in making somebody else’s life better.’

The charity work and her travels around the world have changed Angelina from an unsettled, often wild young woman into a conscience-driven mother determined to use her fame – and money – for humanitarian causes.

It was while she was making her first Lara Croft film, Tomb Raider, in 2001 that she first travelled to Cambodia. She returned to the same country on a UN field mission and decided that she would adopt a child. She registered with an American-based adoption agency and returned to Cambodia again, in March 2002, to visit orphanages.

‘I woke up the day I met Maddox thinking, “My son or daughter is here. They’re going to introduce me to a child and I wonder how I’m going to feel?” And the moment I met him [Maddox was seven months old at the time] I knew I was his mother. And I can’t explain it. I don’t know why, but it was absolutely meant to be.’

She has always had a difficult relationship with her own father, Jon Voight (Oscar-winning star of Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home and Mission: Impossible), who left her mother when Angelina was a toddler; there have been long periods when they haven’t spoken.