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Best-selling author Andrew Morton became a household name after his biography of Princess Diana, "Diana: Her True Story," hit bookstores in the early '90s. After her death he made public just how much she had collaborated with him. Since then the former British tabloid journalist has written unauthorized biographies about Tom Cruise, Madonna and Monica Lewinsky.
His latest book, "Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography," delves into the family dysfunction that created celebrity actress Angelina Jolie, daughter of actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. The 58-year-old writer follows her from self-mutilation and heroin addiction to an Academy Award and her work with refugees for the United Nations.
How did your perception of Angelina Jolie evolve or change during the researching and writing of the book?
It evolved completely. I mean, like everybody else, I took on board the whole nature of her relationship with her father and mother. The narrative that she told herself and the narrative other people witnessed were completely at variance. So I really had to shift my perception of Angelina, her mother, her father, her brother and the way that family dynamic worked.
See the Did you find you became more sympathetic toward her?
Yeah, I think Angelina has this very chilly, hands-off, rather distant, sex-goddess look about her. But as I looked more at her personality and the drama of her early years, it very much humanized her.
The book chronicles a cycle of dysfunction starting with Angelina's grandmother on her mother's side, of a desire for fame and putting that burden on each succeeding generation. Because Angelina has achieved the dream, will she continue the cycle?
I think the children have got enough variety in their lives and enough stimulation that there will be that kind of imposition. But given the fact that they live in an artistic household, as opposed to a scientific one, they are far more likely to go into the performing arts and the arts generally. You know, Brad Pitt is interested in architecture, Angelina is interested in sculpture, and it's going to be intriguing to see how these six children emerge.
She basically grew up in a broken home with very little discipline, and Brad grew up in a traditional family unit. How do you predict that conflict will play out?
Yeah, there is conflict. Those people who spoke to me who know the couple today say that the conflict is usually about the children, as it was when Angelina was growing up. It's about boundaries. I think that Jane Pitt, Brad's mother, who spends a lot of time there, has to spend a lot of her time biting her tongue.
Her father left her mother for another woman, and that has reverberated in Angelina's life ever since. She seems to put herself in the role of the other woman in relationships.
Absolutely, and it's as though she is constructing a test for them, you know? Where they have to compromise themselves in order to prove themselves. By doing so, they leave themselves open to rejection. They diminish themselves. You are absolutely right. She always used to paint herself as the other girl. The girl who wasn't the clean girl -- wasn't the girl next door. But, she always wanted to be the girl next door and never felt she could be. She felt she was the outsider. She felt she was the one looking in to where the party was going on. As a teenager she felt disenfranchised from herself and from her sexuality.
That goes back to the beginning of the book where you reveal she lived in a room alone as an infant with caregivers coming and going.
People say, "How accurate is that?" I think that's a fairly authentic account of those imprinting months that she spent there. It helps to explain a lot about her, that she's a very kind of cool, self-contained kid. It helps to explain a lot about the self-mutilation that went on, whether it's cutting or drug abuse and to some extent anorexia.
In the book you talk about how Maddox, her first adopted son, is her only constant. Can you speculate on what will happen when he gets to a rebellious age and perhaps turns on her?
Oh, she'd be devastated if he turned on her because he's been a real constant. I mean, if the book has a fulcrum, it's meeting Maddox. It's not meeting Brad, it's meeting Maddox. There is bound to be conflict between a growing boy and the mother.
Is it fair to say she was raised to love the spotlight and loves fame?
She actually sought the fame. Billy Bob [Thornton, her ex-husband] was quite articulate about it. He said he's an artist and accepting that fame is the price he has to pay, whereas he could see with Angelina, she craved fame.
You talk about her being a Gemini. Are you a believer in astrology?
Yeah, if it is done properly by a good astrologer. A good friend of mine is Penny Thornton, who was Princess Diana's astrologer. I think she's excellent. She's done my chart a couple of times, and it has always been accurate. [Angelina's] mother used to read the [stars] every single day. She had her own astrologer and then became so competent she didn't need the astrologer.
The mother was different and not necessarily a nurturing figure.
What I think has happened over the years is that both Angelina and [her brother] James have articulated an idealized version of their mother that just wasn't the case in real life. I really used the witness of other people who knew Marcheline and knew Jon to explain why the dynamic was what it was.
Were your sources ever worried about any kind of backlash?
From Jon or Angelina? No, I think there's a deeper motivation for this that people haven't really picked up on. It's the fact that the people who have seen the Voight family, the Bertrand family, and have watched the dynamic over the years can see that Angelina is making decisions about her life based on false premises. They've contributed to this book in the hope that she would understand her own life more vividly and more clearly than they could possibly express themselves. That's why this book is very credible and why it is also controversial.
When you set out to uncover a personality, do you start by asking for interviews with the person the book is about and the principals involved?
Oh, yeah, I always do that. Quite frankly it's -- I mean I have written authorized biographies of Diana and the president of Kenya. I've written unauthorized biographies of footballers, pop stars and actors, and ultimately it's the same. You are asking the same questions: "Who is the person?" and "Why do they behave as they do?" Certainly Brad and Angelina and Jennifer [Aniston, Mr. Pitt's ex-wife], the whole lot, are just defined by the tabloid image. This is just an attempt to explain Angelina, and according to Forbes Magazine the most influential celebrity in the world today, in a way that is coherent and understandable.
Well, it's pretty amazing -- her image went from vials of blood around her neck to the United Nations.
There's a couple of chapters in the book dealing with the transformation. The rehab movie was definitely "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." Having to be fit and on a proper diet for that really helped her to get over her use of heroin. It wasn't an easy process. There was a lot of backsliding to it. It took her two years to come off heroin. For Angelina, it was a long struggle. To give him his credit, Billy Bob, having been addicted to alcohol and being a former drug user, was instrumental in helping her to do that.
So, do you think Brad wakes up and wonders "what he got himself into"?
[Laughing.] Well, he got himself into it very early on, didn't he! He was chasing her on the set. ... Brad was after her. But there is a great quote in The New Yorker that said, "Brad looks like a guy who went out to hail a cab and was hit by a bunch of trucks." As he said himself, "It's been the best of times and the worst of times."
Finally, as far as their professionally competitive relationship, would you say that is fairly common in Hollywood marriages?
Yes, especially with Type A [personalities] and not just Hollywood marriages. Don't think that Brad doesn't want to be a better pilot than Angie. Don't think that Brad doesn't want to get an Oscar so it can go along Angie's on their mantelpiece. Of course they're competitive, at every level, and it makes for an interesting male-female dynamic. That was the nature of her relationship with Jonny Lee Miller [her first husband], competitive. She wasn't built to be a muse or a helpmate. Angie ain't a helpmate. She's a rival.
Mackenzie Carpenter's video program, "Omnivore," is available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
