Love Angelina Jolie’s movies? Of course not. But they’re not what make her the star she is Hadley Freeman
I see that Angelina Jolie is on the cover of Vogue this month, to brighten our February gloom, which provides me with an opportunity to discuss what might be the most urgent question of our era: why is Jolie so famous?
Let’s take this apart. First: why is Jolie well-known at all? Because she’s an actor, of course. Aha, I say to you, waggling my moustache like Hercule Poirot, right before dismantling somebody’s alibi: name a single movie of Jolie’s that you have actually seen. Maybe Maleficent, AKA Wicked Witch Of The Cheekbones? Possibly Girl, Interrupted? Sure, they exist, those movies, and she was definitely in them. Except they were made two decades apart, and they came out either long before her peak fame era or many years into it, which I would date roughly as 2005 to 2017. Instead, during that period Jolie made films such as Wanted, Beowulf,
Chances are you’re quite bored of your home by now. Oh sure, you know how lucky you are, if you have a warm and comfortable place to live when so many don’t. But a person could live in a full-on palace and still, at this point in a generation-defining global pandemic, think, “If I have to spend one more day looking at this cornicing and those enormous wall sconces, I will genuinely hurl myself off the balcony.” So allow me to share the greatest.