The trauma of her father’s absence has deeply saddened Jolie’s life and influenced her perspective on the world. “He had the perfect family, but there [was] something for him that [was] very scary about that,” she has said.

When barely past kindergarten, Jolie made her debut in her father’s 1982 film, Lookin’ to Get Out. By 11, she was at Lee Strasberg Institute, then graduated at 16 from Beverly Hills High School. Jolie majored in film at NYU; modeled in NYC, London, and Paris; spent time at the Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles; and appeared in numerous music videos.

Her portrayal of Cornelia Wallace in the 1997 TV movie George Wallace earned her a Golden Globe and Best Supporting Actress Emmy nomination. She also received a Golden Globe for her role as the drug-addicted lesbian model in the 1998 HBO film, Gia. In 1999, at 24, Jolie earned her third Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing Lisa, the seductive mental patient in Girl, Interrupted.

Coloring Jolie’s many professional milestones has been her eccentric behavior. As her name was announced as a winner during the 2000 Academy Awards telecast, she leaned over to lock lips with—her brother! This Kiss Seen Round the World fueled rumors of an incestuous relationship, which she and Haven both denied.

During her teens, Jolie struggled with mind-altering drugs and has said that she hurt herself—cutting her skin, considered a form of addictive “pain letting.” She has explained, “You’re young, you’re drunk, you’re in bed, you have knives; shit happens.”

Things have changed since Jolie adopted her son, after the filming of Beyond Borders in Cambodia, in 2003. “Before Maddox, when things would go bad, I had a tendency to be depressed or self-destructive or lost, and I can’t afford to be any of that now,” she said. “I have to be clear and focused and .ne all the time. So he has given me strength.”

Further advancing her dark image: She collects knives and has owned a pet rat and snake. Jolie also once wanted to be a funeral director, and even enrolled in mortuary school. “There’s something about death that is comforting,” she said. “The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate life now.”

Yet, despite her troubled emotional past, Jolie is not a strong proponent of counseling. “Therapy?” she once asked. “I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.”

Jolie performed her own stunts in the 2000 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, ending up with cuts from her acrobatic swings on a chandelier. Her character (part Terminator, Wonder Woman, and Indiana Jones) was reprised in 2003 (Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life). “People send me offers to play tough women with guns,” she said. “I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.”

In her first “Tomb Raider” film, Jolie had the opportunity to play out an emotional reconciliation scene opposite her father. Voight’s character told her he missed her, loved her, and would always be with her. Their relationship has since deteriorated. Jolie was furious when he prematurely leaked to the press that “he was a grandfather.” Voight later told Access Hollywood that he thought his daughter had “serious mental problems.”

Jolie has determined that “it is not healthy for me to be around my father, especially now that I am responsible for my own child…. We only have so much energy in life,” she said.

The press has portrayed Jolie as a treacherous Spider Woman with a seductive history of luring her co-stars into her web. While filming Hackers in 1995, she entangled British actor Jonny Lee Miller, three years her senior, whom she married the next year, at 21, wearing black leather pants and a white shirt, with his name scrawled in blood across the back. The marriage ended in 1999.

“People always think that I am a bad girl,” said Jolie. “Or that I carry a dark secret or am obsessed with death. The truth is, I am probably the least morbid person one can meet. If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.”

Jolie was also linked at this time to Timothy Hutton, 15 years her senior and her co-star in Playing God (1997). And while filming the five-woman ensemble film Foxfire, she had a lesbian affair with model/co-star Jenny Shimizu. “I was surprised when I found myself having the feelings for this woman that I had only previously felt for men,” she said.

While filming the air-traf.c-controller flick Pushing Tin (1999), she met Billy Bob Thornton, 20 years her senior and then living with actress/fiancée Laura Dern. There was an instant, obsessive sexual attraction, and at 24, Jolie eloped with Thornton to Las Vegas. During their three-year marriage, which ended in 2003, she wore a vial of his blood around her neck and added a large, script “Billy Bob” tattoo to her left upper arm (since removed). Apparently, a child crowded their love nest. “Our priorities had shifted overnight,” Jolie then said of her failed marriage to Thornton, who already had three children from two of his four ex-wives. “He’s focused on his music and career. I’m focused on my baby.”

Jolie’s body is a living memoir of her passions and pain. There is an “H” inside her left wrist, imprinted when she was dating Hutton (now she says it honors her brother). Jolie’s left forearm trumpets the Tennessee Williams quote, “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.” Across her stomach is scrawled the Latin statement: “Quod me nutrit me destruit.” (“What nourishes me also destroys me.”). And there is the Japanese sign of death, a large black cross, a dragon, two black American Indian symbols, and a blue window on her lower back (she’s always “looking through a window, wishing she were somewhere else”).

During the summer of 2004, while filming the action flick, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, rumors simmered about the on-set chemistry between her and co-star, Brad Pitt, 42. The two went through “spy-training school,” learned to “move in sync” with loaded pistols, and were given lessons in slow dancing. “We had to learn to move in tandem,” explained Jolie. “We learned to trust each other.”

The press trumpeted that Pitt’s Hollywood-perfect marriage to Friends’ favorite, Jennifer Aniston, might be in trouble. Although Jolie still denies that she ever “dated or slept with a married man,” Pitt, who separated from Aniston last January, began spending all his time with Jolie. After Labor Day (to avoid crowds), the two rented a house in Southampton. His divorce from Aniston was final this past October.

Jolie seems to have grounded Pitt, although he has recently joined her in taking flying lessons. Jolie, who now owns a single-engine plane, says that her main motivation to get her pilot’s license last year was her son’s fascination with aircraft. “If I could actually fly a plane by the time he [was] four, I’d be like Superman to him,” she said.

Following Jolie’s humanitarian lead, Pitt answered phones for the Hurricane Katrina relief telethon. He also accompanied Jolie to Ethiopia last summer (when she adopted Zahara) and to earthquake-devastated areas in Pakistan in November. This fall, Jolie and the children set up house with him in Calgary while he filmed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And in early December, Pitt’s publicist confirmed that “Brad Pitt is in the process of becoming the adoptive father of both children.” A legal petition filed in Los Angeles will change their surnames to Jolie-Pitt.

Reveling in motherhood, Jolie would like to retreat to her home in England (she also has a home in the Cambodian jungle). “My role as Goodwill Ambassador has made my work as a film star relatively dull,” she explained. “I’m not excited about going to a film set.”

Still, in 2007, Jolie will be the voice of the Queen of Darkness in Beowolf, and she is now filming (with Matt Damon) the CIA biopic, The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro.

Now that Pitt’s life seems wedded to hers, is there a biological child in her future? Jolie has made no secret of her desire to adopt again. She has joked that she will end up being the next Mia Farrow, or Josephine Baker, who each adopted several children from varied cultures and religions. “There are so many wonderful places—many parts of Asia, Africa, South America, so sooner or later, I’ll end up everywhere, I’m sure,” she says.

One thing is certain: This Girl on a Mission will remain true to her passions, and if again disappointed in life and love, will pick herself up and move on. “It’s a survival thing,” she said. “I just move forward. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.”