While the tabloids are buzzing that Angelina Jolie has been spending time in Montreal with her hunky "Taking Lives" costar, Olivier Martinez, the new PEOPLE has the actress on its cover with the real man in her life: son Maddox, age 2, whom she adopted in Cambodia when he was 7 months old.

In fact, the magazine caught up with the "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" star, 28, inside her trailer on the "Taking Lives" set, finding her busily playing with her boy.

"Mad's just discovered black," she says. "Also red and orange."

Another talent? "He can do his hair in a Mohawk if I put gel in his hand," says Jolie. The tyke's most impressive feat, however, is the spell he has cast on his mom. "For me, becoming a parent changed everything," she says. "My priorities straightened out. My life is all different."

That's for sure. In the past year Jolie has undergone a dramatic turnabout, transforming herself from the tattooed, kinda scary, crazy-in-love wife of Billy Bob Thornton to a (still tattooed) single mom and U.N. activist.

Like any proud mom, Jolie can't stop talking about her child. "I remember his first warm bath," she says. "He seemed so surprised. Then I realized he didn't have plumbing (in his poor Cambodian village), so he'd never felt warm water before."

These days Jolie's favorite time is when the two curl up in bed together. "Every night I get a foot in the face or a finger poking me in the eye," she says, "but it's fantastic. When he gets cozy, it's the best feeling in the world."