Angelina Jolie

While most Hollywood stars do everything they can to appear cool, professional and squeaky-clean, diligently concealing all their nasty little secrets, Angelina Jolie appears wholly unconcerned by controversy. Ever-keen to talk about her breakdowns, her disorders, her fantasies and her world-famous penchant for S&M, many would say she's built a career on titillating public confession. But she's also an increasingly fine and award-winning performer, her Oscar for Girl, Interrupted being only the first in a string of prestigious honours. Onscreen, as in bed, she is a risk-taker, and perhaps deserves to be seen as the spiritual sister of such greats as Streep, Pfeiffer and Lange. Beyond this, her international efforts on behalf of children and refugees have made her the most public-minded superstar since Audrey Hepburn.

She was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, on June 4th, 1975 - her name meaning Pretty Little Angel. Her father, Jon, was already an established superstar, having topped the bill in such classics as Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance. When Angelina was 2, he'd scoop the Best Actor Oscar for Coming Home. By then though, he'd already split from her mother, the part-Iroquois actress and model Marcheline Bertrand (now Angelina'smanager), who'd moved with Angelina and her brother James to the East Coast - to the Palisades, New York, to be more precise.

Living here, Angelina Jolie was a happy child. She collected snakes and lizards - her favourite lizard being named Vladimir, and her favourite snake Harry Dean Stanton - and, oddly, like many females of her age, she had a major crush on Mr Spock. She would wear glittery clothing, including sparkly underwear, and flounce around, already performing, keen to make people laugh, to make them like her. She was a member of the Kissy Girls, who hunted boys down and kiss them till they screamed - until the school was forced to call the parents and the gang broke up. Marcheline would take the kids to the movies often, and Jolie claims this is where she got the notion to be an actress - not from her uncle, Chip Taylor (an actor and composer), not from her godmother Jacqueline Bisset, and definitely NOT from her father, though at age 7 she did appear in Lookin' To Get Out, a movie about inveterate gamblers, co-written by and starring Jon Voight.