Boss Ladies - Angelina Jolie

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

Angelina is an American actress, film director, humanitarian activist, and mother of six children, including three internationally adopted. 
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If you ask people what they have always wanted to do, most people haven’t done it. That breaks my heart.

She has won many prestigious awards, including an Academy Award, 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globes. She is also considered to be the highest paid actress in all of Hollywood.

She promotes and raises awareness of major causes and world issues such as human rights, women’s rights, wildlife conservation, education, and refugees. Also, she has been named as the “world’s most beautiful woman” by a number of media outlets.
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Despite all of this high praise and fame in later life, Angelina had a very difficult early life, which did not look promising for a long time. Soon after starting Beverly Hills high school, she was shunned by fellow pupils from more privileged backgrounds as a result of her mother surviving on a very low income.

She was bullied for being very thin, and wearing braces and glasses. During this time, her mother encouraged her to pursue modelling, but this was ended unsuccessfully. 

When Angelina transferred to an alternative high school, she began to join the punk rock subculture, and started to wear all black, spending a lot of her free time in mosh pits. After dropping out of all her acting classes, she quickly decided to pursue a career in the funeral industry, and began to take embalming courses from home!

Overall, she struggled to engage socially, and to connect emotionally with other people. She resorted to self harm, as well as battling sleep deprivation, an eating disorder, and severe drug addiction. Suffering from a number of depression episodes, she experienced a nervous breakdown at the age of 24. 

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Any time I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare.
​I stare until I remind myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, so much to see.

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Her acting career suffered, as she was turned down for nearly every role she auditioned for. After a long time of trying and failing many times, she landed her first professional role in a low budget sci-fi film, but she was greatly disappointed with this role, and gave up trying for a while.

​2 years later, she finally starred in her first ever Hollywood movie! From the late 1990s onwards, Jolie’s acting career really took off at last, resulting in her winning many awards, which grew her reputation very fast. In the 2010s, she ventured into film directing, starting with the educational documentary A Place In Time. 

When filming for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Jolie witnessed first hand the effects of the humanitarian crisis in Cambodia. This dramatically changed her perceptions of the world and the issues faced by people in these disasters. From then on, she went on nearly 50 field missions in 30 countries. As well as conservation and community development, she is an ambassador for children’s rights and education, as well as women’s rights. 

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Jolie has donated millions of pounds to these causes, and has worked with national governments to bring change. She has also won many charity-based awards as a result of her extensive work.

Reflecting on Angelina Jolie’s life and work in the light of all the hardship she faced as a teenager and young adult, it is amazing to see the potential she had as a teenager struggling to make friends that she would not have seen. 

If you are a young person, or indeed anyone of any age struggling to find your place in life, and to succeed in the dreams you have...or even if you are struggling to find your dreams, please be encouraged! As you continue to grow and change, you will naturally discover new things, and as you learn more about yourself and the world we live in, you will discover new passions that you would not have expected.
So don’t worry about reaching milestones you think you should have reached by now. Just start exploring and learning wherever you are. And whatever you are dreaming of, do not give up!