By Andrew Morton,
St. Martin's Press, 328 pages, $32
Reviewed by Mike Stimpson
Angelina Jolie is one of the most polarizing figures in pop culture.
Is the Hollywood movie star a nurturing earth mother, or a narcissist who drags her six kids (three adopted, three biological) around the world with little regard for what they want?
Is she a passionate humanitarian, or a self-aggrandizing phoney? A bad girl gone good, or an unrepentant homewrecker?
Few would disagree that she's an exceptional actor with a commanding screen presence, given her performances in such films as Changeling, A Mighty Heart and the title role in the new movie Salt. But her talent isn't what gets tongues wagging, and it won't sell many books.
It's no surprise, then, that British celebrity biographer Andrew Morton focuses on the enigmatic and often controversial off-screen Jolie in this scandal-heavy tome.
He recounts the scandals, dishes never-before-heard stories, and tries to explain what makes the pillow-lipped thespian tick.
The end result is a somewhat gamy stew of dubious ingredients.
This book's greatest shortcomings are in Morton's attempts at accounting for Jolie's personality, or what we know of it.
For that he turns to a battery of psychiatrists and psychologists who have never even met the woman who was born Angelina Jolie Voight 35 years ago.
Jolie's father, Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, left his wife, son and infant Angelina for a young drama student.
Seeing a facial resemblance between baby girl and scoundrel dad, Angelina's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, could hardly bear to have the child around. So she assigned a rotating crew of babysitters to care for Angie in a separate apartment.
One result of all this, according to Morton's stable of shrinks, was a deep-seated fear of abandonment that has affected Jolie's relationships, especially with men, all her life.
The book makes recurring themes of parental conflict and Jolie's "inner turmoil," which Morton can't possibly understand since he has never had a conversation with her.
A psychologist tells us teenage Angelina's suicidal thoughts reflected how she lacked a "sense of self," probably because "she had internalized all that abandonment as a baby."
Jolie was a druggie and a "cutter" (that is, she inflicted harm on herself by cutting) with anorexia in her high school years because her insides were roiling with rage and other demons, say a psychiatrist and a psychologist.
That she abused drugs in her teen and adult years is something Jolie has admitted to. So is the cutting. But that anorexia stuff has a shaky foundation.
Morton isn't the first writer to report that Jolie has struggled with anorexia, but still the assertion should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yes, she has sometimes been rather thin. But that alone doesn't mean she's anorexic.
The former London tabloid reporter can't point to any anorexia treatment, nor any evidence of anorexia beyond Jolie's thin build and the occasional statements she's made about watching her calories.
Yet he repeatedly says she's anorexic, as if it's an indisputable fact, and he trots out explanations for the eating disorder from his team of experts on the mind.
Of course, much psychobabble is also thrown around to explain Jolie's brief and non-monogamous first marriage to British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her brief but intense marriage to actor-musician Billy Bob Thornton, and the dynamics of her current relationship with fellow screen superstar Brad Pitt.
Her adoption of children from other countries is interpreted as being "symbolic of how alien she feels."
As if Morton's use of never-met-Angelina-but-I'll-gladly-analyze-her shrinks weren't bad enough, he applies the zodiac to his subject.
You see, Angie's a Gemini. So it's hardly surprising that she has "a dual personality, the forces of good and evil, darkness and light, male and female, wrestling in her psyche."
Morton repeatedly goes back to that hokum to explain perceived "dualities" and contradictions, as if inconsistencies aren't just a part of being human.
After his 2008 book critically examined Tom Cruise's immersion in a cult, Morton's use of astrology in this one is a major disappointment that hurts his credibility.
Also not helping is how Morton fails to cite sources for many of his Angelina tales.
He writes that Jolie's mother kick-started teenage Angelina's acting career by telling her agent, behind Angelina's back, to go ahead and let everyone know that she's Jon Voight's kid.
The story is one of the book's "scoops," and it seems plausible. But it would be a lot more credible if Morton told us where he got it. (Jolie's mother died a few years ago and isn't mentioned as a source, so it's not likely her.)
Similarly, Morton says Jolie once shocked her dad with photos of her licking and kissing her lesbian lover, model Jenny Shimizu.
Since the scribe doesn't disclose who told him the tale and how that person knows about it, we have nothing on which to assay its credibility.
Jolie's sexual liaisons with women are, by the way, discussed as a pathology -- "part of being lost" and not knowing herself, according to a psychoanalyst.
Jolie won an Academy Award in 2000 for her portrayal of a psych patient in Girl, Interrupted. Now Morton and his clinical friends can't stop psychoanalyzing the actress.
In the final analysis, this book isn't worth the cover price.
