The Guardian Weekend | 13 February 2021 5I 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 Malefi cent , AKA Wicked Witch Of
The Cheekbones? Possibly Girl, Interrupted? Sure, they exist, those
movies, and she was defi nitely 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 fi lms such as Wanted , Beowulf ,
Changeling and Salt. Did you see any of those? Of course not. No one
you know saw Jolie’s 2017 fi lm, By The Sea. And yet, during those
years, Jolie was probably the most A-list US actress in the world.
So if it’s not because of the movies, then why? Well, Jolie is very
beautiful and she does lots of things that come under the vague umbrella
term of “humanitarian work”: campaigning for refugees, women and
children in developing countries, which is obviously very good; goingto war zones during actual wars, which is ... is that good? Bob Hope did
that and people loved him for it, but I’m guessing Jolie didn’t break into
any comedy song and dance routines in Darfur. But sure, she is clearly
well-intentioned. Although again, this doesn’t explain her level of
fame, given that the public’s interest in celebrity goodwill ambassadors
falls, I have long suspected, far short of what the UN believes.
Instead, Jolie is largely famous for her personal life, which has
been, no question, a helluva ride. She mined the emo era in the late
90s with Girl, Interrupted, and by wearing a vial of her brother’s
blood to the Oscars; she outplayed everyone in the big celebrity era
of the noughties when she ran off with Brad Pitt; and here she is
now, already well ahead of today’s more wholesome vibe, talking
about the importance of family. No question, in her personal life,
Jolie absolutely walks the walk: she broke every taboo around for
sexy Hollywood stars when she went public about her preventive
double mastectomy, highlighting the importance of testing for BRCA
mutations to prevent breast cancer.
And Vogue tacitly acknowledges that it is really not about the
work in its interview with Jolie: 85% of the questions are about her
family, 13% are about her humanitarian work, and 1% is about her
forthcoming appearance in a Marvel movie. There are no references
to previous fi lms, no casual mention of iconic roles, because, well, we
covered that already. Instead the fi nal 1% is given over to this gripping
hot-button question: “Could you tell us about your upcoming project
with Guerlain and women bee keepers?”
Now, when a celebrity is asked this kind of question, it means one of
two things: they are so powerful that the journalist has agreed to ask
this in order to bag the interview, or there is no more work you can ask
them about. What’s interesting about Jolie is that, in her case, it’s both.
I don’t mean this as a slur against her, because I actually think Jolie
is completely brilliant at what she does, which is being a celebrity. You
might argue that we live in an age in which there are lots of people
who are famous for nothing much: infl uencers, reality TV stars, Peter
Andre who is, according to the tabloids, still A Thing. But Jolie is in
a diff erent league. For a start, all these lesser celebrities build their
brands on that loathsome PR concept of “relatability”. Jolie is not
here to be related to. Jessica Garner might post details of her cooking
disasters, and Ben Affl eck is photographed picking his Amazon
deliveries up off the doorstep , but it feels very TBD whether Jolie eats,
sleeps or does anything recognisably normal at all.
In that sense, she is famous in a deeply, pleasingly old-school way,
and she riff s on this. She has adopted a zillion children, continuing
a tradition established by Joan Crawford and, more obviously, Mia
Farrow. She travels the world doing good works, as Audrey Hepburn
did. She even lives in Cecil B De Mille’s former house in Los Angeles.
But all those people – and I’m sorry to keep harping on about this – are
associated with multiple fi lms. Jolie is more in the vein of Zsa Zsa
Gabor, a woman who certainly acted , but was famous, ultimately, for
being both over the top and completely fabulous.
And as I sit at home in miserable lockdown, looking at the Vogue
photoshoot of Jolie in a kaftan, in her garden with her giant dogs,
answering questions about her work with female beekeepers , I have
to think, relatable schmelatable. Over the top and fabulous every
time, please
Hadley Freeman and Tim Dowling will be in conversation on 25
February , 8pm. Details and £5 tickets at membership.theguardian.comHadley Freeman
ILLUSTRATION: THE PROJECT TWINS/SYNERGY
Love Angelina Jolie’s movies? Of course not. But they’re not what make her fabulous
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