Bad girl interrupted

By Matthew Swibel

updated 6:28 p.m. ET June 15, 2006

Angelina Jolie, the Oscar-winning actress and media obsession, has focused international attention on her heartfelt cause, the plight of the poorest children in the developing world. She visits refugee camps in war-torn regions of Southeast Asia to comfort hundreds of kids who have lost limbs to land mines. She lobbies Congress on behalf of orphans with AIDS. She personally has donated $4 million since 2001 to Pakistani earthquake victims and other causes, most recently to maternity wards of state hospitals in Namibia, the impoverished African nation where she gave birth to her daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, on May 27.

The first photos of her new baby, which Jolie released to Getty Images, brought a reported $4.1 million payment from People magazine — the glossy disputes the amount — and she is giving all of the proceeds to charity. But Jolie, in her first one-on-one interview since giving birth, candidly acknowledges her crusade has an extra upside: It diverts movie fans, supermarket tabloids and the media from focusing on more controversial and less attractive elements of her life.

"That is a fair assessment," she tells FORBES in an exclusive interview. Her work "is twofold: I have all that gossip in my life that has gotten so out of control. And my work in Washington and with the UN gets people to focus on other things." Jolie, 31, who won an Academy Award in 2000 for her supporting role as a mental patient in the film "Girl, Interrupted," has thus been able to endure hits to her image that might otherwise have badly hurt her career.

The public-relations value of a good deed has quelled carpers who could have painted an uglier picture, say, of a home-wrecker and sex symbol who's had an out-of-wedlock baby with a heartthrob actor she stole from America's sweetheart. (Last year Jolie had a rumored affair with Brad Pitt, her costar in the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," purportedly prompting him to leave his actress wife, the perky sitcom darling Jennifer Aniston. "Brangelina," as the couple has been christened in the press, have denied that marriage will follow.)

'It's all about self-interest'
But some of the best charitable works are motivated by a personal stake. Michael Milken, the former Wall Street banker and philanthropist who survived prostate cancer, has pledged $50 million or more for research on his disease, yielding breakthrough therapies. Virgin Group Chief Richard Branson devotes money and staff for work on AIDS in South Africa, in part because he employs 4,500 there.

"It's all about self-interest. Your experience is the epicenter of your efforts," says actor Michael J. Fox, whose Parkinson's disease was diagnosed in 1991. He has mounted a nationwide effort to increase Parkinson's funding and persuade Congress to override the Bush Administration's ban on using federal dollars for research on new stem-cell lines, which might be useful in treating his debilitating disease. Had it not been diagnosed, "Would I have picked this disease out of a hat and run with it?" Fox asks. "No. Besides, it would be less authentic if I had."

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So it is that Angelina Jolie, who earns $15 million per film, has benefited visibly from her good works. Her Q score, a much-watched quotient in Hollywood that gauges a star's likability among hoi polloi, has gone up with her aid efforts. In 2000 only 31 percent of respondents said she was "familiar" to them, and only 14 percent of those viewed her positively. By 2006 she was familiar to 81 percent of Americans, and her positive rating had almost doubled to 25 percent, says Marketing Evaluations Inc. (Her negative rating rose, too, but it is lower than that of the average performer.)

Still, her improving image is in sharp contrast with the bizarre persona she had before her Third World aid efforts began in early 2001. Back then, the star with the fullest, most famous pair of lips since Mick Jagger was known for edgy eccentricity. She got multiple tattoos. She had been in naughty romps with costars. She wore, on a chain around her neck, a tiny vial of blood from her then husband, actor-writer Billy Bob Thornton. She passionately kissed her brother on the lips at the 2000 Academy Awards and spoke publicly of bisexual trysts. "In my early 20s I was fighting with myself," Jolie says. "Now I take that punk in me to Washington, and I fight for something important."

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