What was Angelina Jolie’s first movie as an actor?
As the daughter of Academy Award-winning ‘New Hollywood’ stalwart Jon Voight and actor Marcheline Bertrand, never mind having Oscar winner Maximilian Schell and Jacqueline Bisset as godparents, Angelina Jolie was virtually pre-ordained to get into the family business.
That said, unlike many other second-generation performers, she hasn’t been acting constantly since childhood. While Jolie’s first onscreen appearance came at a very early age, she took a step back from film and television for over a decade before deciding that it was the career path she wanted to follow.
With a competitive Oscar, an honorary humanitarian prize, three Golden Globes, and a Tony under her belt as an actor and producer, it’s safe to say she made the right choice. Jolie has evolved into one of the 21st century’s biggest stars despite rarely playing the political game required to achieve and maintain that status. Instead, she’s focused just as much energy into her activism and philanthropy yet remains so famous worldwide that her star power has never diminished.
Jolie was only eight years old when she made her screen debut, credited under her full name of ‘Angelina Jolie Voight’ as Tosh in 1982’s Lookin’ to Get Out, playing the daughter of her real-life father. However, it would be a long time until she felt compelled to return to acting.
When she did, it was hardly under the most glittering of circumstances. After an 11-year sabbatical from cinema, Jolie’s second role was as the female lead of the shoddy straight-to-video sci-fi action sequel Cyborg 2. It got her foot back in the door, though, and she never looked back. A little over six years after the panned genre flick was released, she took to the stage in March 2000 to collect her Oscar after winning ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted.
So, what was Angelina Jolie’s first leading role?
Bizarrely, Jolie had made over a dozen movies, won two Golden Globes and an Oscar, and worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest names before she was awarded top billing in a movie for the first time.
While she’d certainly played leading roles, she was nonetheless listed second in the credits behind Elias Koteas in Cyborg 2, Jonny Lee Miller in Hackers, Hedy Burress in Foxfire, Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector, and Nicolas Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds.
Her highest-profile leading role before then came on the small screen, and she reaped the rewards after her showstopping turn as Gia Carangi in Michael Cristofer’s HBO biopic Gia earned her the Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film’.
Doing what many other fast-rising stars have done in the immediate aftermath of their breakout performance, Jolie followed up her Oscar win by signing on for a blockbuster action movie, with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider marking the first time she’d ever been placed front and centre in the credits or in the marketing as the number one reason for audiences to see a movie.
It certainly helped that the video game series the film was based on was one of the most well-known, but Jolie pulled her weight in propelling Simon West’s globetrotting adventure to almost $375 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing console-to-screen adaptation ever made at the time.
…and what was Angelina Jolie’s first movie as a director?
Jolie’s first foray into directing stands apart from the rest of her subsequent work because it’s the only one of her movies that isn’t a narrative feature. Soundtracked by Wyclef Jean, the 2007 documentary A Place in Time followed the daily lives of everyday people in more than 20 countries, offering an insightful slice of life that touches down in orphanages and refugee camps to convey different sides of the human experience.
Four years later Jolie wrote, directed, and produced In the Land of Blood and Honey, an unflinching war drama detailing a love story unfolding against the haunting backdrop of the Bosnian War. It was subject matter that was close to her heart, something that’s remained true of her forays behind the camera, which includes Cambodian-set thriller First They Killed My Father the literary adaptation Without Blood.
