From wild child to loving mum

No intimate access to Angelina Jolie has been offered in exchange for a flurry of kind and admiring words in this profile, although, of course, it might be that some readers wish it had.

After all, for the right sort of deal we might have uncovered more, for instance, about Jolie's beauty routine, of which only the sketchiest of basics is understood. Sadly, though, the Hollywood superstar never plays ball with the press, so her detractors claim, unless she is completely in charge of the rules.

Far from the reckless wild child in which her many fans had emotionally invested, the actress is emerging as a consummate manipulator of her own publicity, calmly determined to make fame work for her family and for her favourite causes. So if the world really wants to know about her beauty secrets they can do so on her terms - and one might have some sympathy for her.

At 33 Jolie is among the most envied women in the world, if not for her looks, her talent and her wealth, then certainly for her live-in lover, the actor Brad Pitt.

But she now stands accused of mocking the principles of journalistic independence. The public relations team behind her recent film A Mighty Heart made the mistake of printing out a legal document stipulating that interviews 'could only be used to promote the picture'.

These kind of unspoken commitments may be common in the world of film, but a picture quickly emerged of a star who is adept at orchestrating her own coverage.

This month, with another new Jolie film, Clint Eastwood's Changeling, to publicise, the allegations have resurfaced. Anonymous critics from inside America's magazine industry have attacked the star for demanding more than just cash when she offers a glimpse into her private life.

So in return for learning the details of her arched eyebrows and the use of grey lipstick to offset the impact of those fabulous, pillow-like lips, she expects that her charitable work will be emphasised.

For example, following the birth this year of the Pitt-Jolie twins, Knox and Vivienne, the parents offered the first photographs of their newborns for $14 million, as well as a big hand in the content of any resulting article.

People magazine, which won the frenzied bidding process, later denied its staff had agreed to clear the editorial content with Jolie and Pitt.

Whether they did or not, the magazine had the last laugh. The issue in question was the best-selling in seven years. Such is the power the great Jolie wields. And she does it pretty much on her own too, with just a little help from her trusty manager, Geyer Kosinski.

Eastwood's disturbing new film sees Jolie looking about as different as it is possible to imagine from the character of Lara Croft, the Amazonian tomb raider that made her famous.

Instead, appearing delicate and rather as if she might have used that grey lipstick all over her face, Jolie plays a quiet woman who fervently believes her child has been abducted and replaced by another.

It is a haunting and emotional story and the actress, who lost her mother last year, has broken down when talking of the part and of her recent loss. For at least the second time in her career Jolie has vowed to step back from acting and concentrate on mothering her brood of three adopted and three birth children, Maddox, Zahara, Pax, Shiloh and the new twins.

Jolie was born in Los Angeles on 4 June, 1975, the second child of the admired actor Jon Voight and his wife, the late actress and producer, Marcheline Bertrand.

As if she did not have enough God-given glamour on tap, her godparents were the beauteous actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. Growing up, little Angie attended the Beverly Hills High School, made famous in the TV series, and then, when just 11, she enrolled at the renowned Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Jolie went on to model and appear in music videos, including one for Meatloaf, in her teens and then won a couple of Golden Globes for television drama performances.

Her career since has revolved around the portrayal of bad girls and marginal figures - from the she-devil seductress in the 1999 feature Pushing Tin, to her Oscar-winning supporting performance as a mental patient in James Mangold's film of the same year, Girl, Interrupted.

Tellingly, Jolie, who is a natural blonde, has always felt at ease with a darker look, dying her hair to move away from any suggestion of 'the girl next door'.

Even when director Simon West was choosing a simple action heroine to play Lara Croft he admitted he was drawn to Jolie's shadowy aura. "I needed someone with a bit of edge, a bit of darkness," he said.

Since becoming a household name Jolie has endured a high-profile rift with her father (who left her mother soon after she was born) and two short marriages to macho actors who both, coincidentally, rejoice in having two first names each: Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.

But Jolie's story is weirder than just this much suggests. What has always marked her out from other top Hollywood stars are her series of disturbing, almost occult, personal habits: her mysterious tattoos, her obsession with knives, the vials of blood she and Thornton wore around their necks at their wedding, the long public kiss she gave her adored elder brother, the actor and film-maker James Haven, at an awards ceremony, and of course her current relationship with Pitt.

But the old bad girl Angelina image is slowly changing. Her knack for steering her own publicity means that the actress is now seen, not as a satanic vixen but as a maternal icon, with an embrace wide enough to encompass all the unlucky children in the world.

When she was recovering from her marital break-up with Thornton she set up a memorable photo-shoot in a park where she played, apparently innocently, with her toddler, Maddox. A young single mother, disturbed by the prying paparazzi.

More recently when rumours of her affair with Pitt caused people across America to sport T-shirts emblazoned with either 'Team Jolie' or 'Team Aniston', the media focus usefully switched to her charity work in Cambodia.

Jolie had visited the country when filming Lara Croft ... and underwent some kind of epiphany when she came across such widespread poverty.

Simon West has said the actress was genuinely shocked because she had led such a sheltered Californian life until then. Jolie now professes to save a third of her income, live on a third and give a third away.

In August 2005, she was made an official citizen of Cambodia for her efforts to help the environment and, in the combined form of Brangelina, she has set up a charitable foundation that donates to the developing world and to causes in America. After the flood in her family's new home town, New Orleans, the couple set up a relief fund.

Like many a sexy Hollywood star before her, Jolie is sometimes in peril of being such a poster girl that her acting skills are undermined. The sheer voltage of her on-screen sensuality threatens to sear through any part she plays.

For the influential Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, though, Jolie is luckily more akin to a Fonda than a Monroe. Like Jane Fonda, Jolie's father enjoyed a cult status in America, and like Fonda, Jolie is a cooler, more cerebral customer, who is happy to court controversy.

She seems eternally torn between wanting to blow smoke in the face of her public and a stronger urge to reveal herself. The tattooed Tennessee Williams quote on her body that reads: 'A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages' is the ultimate attempt at control. She wants to solve her own riddle, or perhaps even write her own epitaph.

Her hunger for control could well be put down to her troubled relationship with her father. Recent comments made by her brother unravel the mystery.

Haven believes Voight was a malevolent force in their childhood. "We definitely had a taste of his manipulative behaviour," he has said. "But it was when he dealt with my mother that we really saw him pulling the strings. And that made us sad and angry. Angelina and I saw my mom oppressed."

His sister, he thinks, has 'been driven to be an independently wealthy woman now because we saw what it was like to be at the mercy of someone who controls the money and pulls the strings.'

For Jolie fans this fabled toughness is pure bravery and all about facing down her fears. The actress, who had childhood dreams of becoming a funeral director, admits she is morbid, but says she believes the reality of death is comforting because it helps heighten life. It is a bleak determination picked up on by Iain Softley, the director of Hackers, the 1995 thriller on which she met her first husband.

Jolie has, Softley says, a 'distinctive presence. She just had this inner self-confidence in a very understated way. She was focused, daring, bold and brave.'

With this kind of steely foe, it certainly begins to look as if Aniston, hugely attractive and smart though she is, never had a frozen yoghurt's chance in hell of keeping her husband.