The day before her mother's death, Jolie took a call in New Orleans, where she and Pitt have settled during his filming of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Photo by: INF |
Born in Chicago (the French name comes from her French-Canadian family roots), Bertrand "grew up in a bowling alley that my grandparents owned," Jolie told
Allure in 2004. Hoping to make it as an actress, Bertrand moved to L.A. as a young woman. "She was an unusually good person in the best sense of the word," says her friend Anna Strasberg, widow of famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg, with whom Bertrand trained. "It's rare in your life when you meet somebody like her." Bertrand's life would shift radically when she met actor Jon Voight, then fresh off an Oscar nomination for 1969's
Midnight Cowboy. Married in 1971, the couple welcomed son James later that year – and Bertrand shelved her acting ambitions. "She put her career aside for her children," says Strasberg. "She didn't even think of it as 'putting aside' or sacrificing. Her children came first."
After filing for divorce from Voight in 1978, Bertrand threw herself into motherhood with intensity. "She raised me," Jolie has said. Encouraging her children's creativity, she enrolled a young Jolie at the Strasberg Institute and frequently took both kids to the theater. She also instilled a sense of social responsibility: Proud of having Iroquois heritage, Bertrand volunteered with an American Indian arts education group. Says Anna Strasberg: "Marcheline helped the children to be their own people." Although Voight had sporadic contact with his kids over the years, he and Jolie – who, like her brother, dropped her surname in favor of her middle name – remain estranged.
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