As we wrap up 2019, and look ahead to 2020, Harper’s BAZAAR chose Angelina Jolie to grace our final issue of the year because quite simply, there’s no one else like her. Jolie has spent nearly 20 years with the UN Refugee Agency fighting for the rights and freedoms of displaced people, and over 10 years funding schools for girls from Afghanistan to Kenya to Cambodia. She is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, educating students on peace and security and the fight for women’s rights internationally. She champions women’s health—in particular, treatment for cancer—with honesty and openness about her own health experiences in years past.
Here, she writes candidly about “visible and invisible scars,” her fight for freedom around the world, and why she doesn’t mind sharing her new home in Cambodia with a family of chipmunks.
HARPER'S BAZAAR: We recognize in these photos the free-spirited, bold side of you we know from old. Is that a fair characterization?
ANGELINA JOLIE: My body has been through a lot over the past decade, particularly the past four years, and I have both the visible and invisible scars to show for it. The invisible ones are harder to wrestle with. Life takes many turns. Sometimes you get hurt, you see those you love in pain, and you can’t be as free and open as your spirit desires. It’s not new or old, but I do feel the blood returning to my body.
Do you feel like you’re finding yourself again?
AJ: The part of us that is free, wild, open, curious can get shut down by life. By pain or by harm. My children know my true self, and they have helped me to find it again and to embrace it. They have been through a lot. I learn from their strength. As parents, we encourage our kids to embrace all that they are, and all that they know in their hearts to be right, and they look back at us and want the same for us.
As a mother of six, in a world of social media on a public stage, under relentless scrutiny, how do you teach your kids to be bold?
AJ: Knowing our true self is a very important question for all of us. Especially a child. I think kids need to be able to say, “Here’s who I am, and what I believe.” We can’t prevent them from experiencing pain, heartache, physical pain, and loss. But we can teach them to live better through it.
As a public figure, how do you deal with the frustration of constantly being misunderstood? What do you think is the biggest misconception about you?
AJ: I have a tattoo, “A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.” I got it when I was 20. I was with my mom one evening, and I was feeling lost. I was restless—always. I still am. We were driving to dinner, and she talked about spending time with Tennessee Williams and how much she loved his words. She told me he wrote that, about the wild at heart. We drove to a tattoo parlor, and I got it inked on my left arm. What she did for me that night was to remind me that the wild within me is alright and a part of me.
I see so much beauty in other people. Not when they are pretending to be something other than their true selves. Not when they are harming others. Not when they lie. But the wild ones. The emotional, open, searching ones, longing to be free. The honest ones. Because anything else is a cage impossible to live in.
This is our end-of-year edition. Looking ahead to 2020, do you have a message for our readers?
AJ: My dream for everyone in 2020 is to remember who they are and to be who they are regardless of what might be disrupting their ability to be free. If you feel you are not living your life fully, try to identify what it is or who it is that is blocking you from breathing. Identify and fight past whatever is oppressing you. That takes many forms, and it is going to be a different fight for everyone. I say this with a deep understanding that for so many women, freedom is simply not an option. Their own system, community, family, government works against them and is part of what is shutting them down. I’m reading the book No Visible Bruises, which points out that between 2000 and 2006 more American women died from domestic homicide than American soldiers died on the battlefield. It is shocking that across the world the most dangerous place for women today is the home. There are still more than a dozen countries where violence against a wife or family member is legal. And more than 10 countries where perpetrators of rape can still escape prosecution if they marry the victim. And there are more than 70 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including nearly 26 million refugees. None of this is just “the way the world is.” It is something monstrously out of balance. And our response can’t be to shrug or to think only about our own countries, because we are all connected. This is a time to fight. If there is a fight in this life, it must be for freedoms and rights. And if we have our freedom, we must fight for others who don’t.
Sounds rebellious
AJ: If nobody ever rebelled, nothing would ever change.
As a woman, what does it mean to be truly free? And to live boldly?
AJ: A life fully lived is very hard to do. And for many women it is impossible because of what they are up against. I am conscious every day that I have the freedom to speak openly and to make my own choices. And the ability to encourage my children to explore the world, including the world of ideas and expression, without there being limits to what they are allowed to study or know or imagine themselves doing in the future. I think we all know boldness when we see it. Nothing makes me smile more than when I see someone being fully themselves, with their own individual style and character, whatever that is.
How did you like to dress when you were younger?
AJ: At school I wasn’t that popular person; I was a punk. I loved leather, PVC, and fishnets. Those were my three favorite fabrics in my early 20s. I remember the first time I wore PVC pants. I was waiting for an audition, sitting in the sun in L.A. By the time it was my turn, my pants had fused together. I didn’t get the part. But I loved those pants. I wore something similar when I married Jonny [Lee Miller].
Women often feel forced to live up to the standards of “the perfect mother” and “the perfect wife.” Do you think this idea of perfection is dangerous and damaging to women?
AJ: Labeling people and putting them into boxes isn’t freedom. Difference and diversity are what I value most—in my family and in others. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is the same, and I imagine that’s true for everyone reading this. I want to meet people I’ve never met before and learn things I don’t know. The challenge today is to embrace our differences. And not to be fooled by efforts to divide us or make us fear others. We’re seeing a retreat of values worldwide. Many governments are less willing to stand up for the kinds of values that previous generations fought and died to secure. When governments stand back, people have to lead the way, as they are in different parts of the world.
Have you ever felt restricted in your own life?
AJ: I don’t think of myself that way. In my youth, I focused on what I didn’t have. But as I traveled in my early 20s, my awakening was realizing the freedoms I had in comparison to many people around the world. I’d experienced a childhood free of war. And since then I’ve had the freedom to build my family, to create art, and to play the characters I have. It’s one of the reasons I’ve invested in schools for girls in different countries. To see anyone—but especially a young girl with so much potential—denied their freedom is infuriating to me. I don’t think we will be living in a new era for women’s rights until there has been progress. Until people who’ve raped and abused women and girls in Syria and Myanmar and the DRC, for example, are held accountable. That’s why the focus for the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative is to push for an international accountability mechanism, a body that would allow us to overcome the barriers to justice so prosecutions happen.
Has there been progress in Hollywood, in light of #MeToo?
AJ: As anybody knows, the usual starting point in any situation like this is an independent inquiry by experts who can look into the facts and identify what legal changes and protections are needed so there is some measure of independent expert scrutiny and accountability. That hasn’t happened.
You built a home in the Cambodian jungle and became a Cambodian citizen. Can you tell us about that decision? What were some of the biggest challenges? And biggest rewards?
AJ: When you have a loud mind, as I do, you go to places that quiet you, and I find that in the desert, or in the jungle in Cambodia. When I first went to Cambodia, I thought people would be hardened by having experienced so much war and suffering. But in fact it was the opposite. I found them to be full of grace and fight and life. It’s a home and a headquarters for my foundation. There were physical challenges, though. We had to clear nearly 50 land mines before we could live there.
You have traveled the world as both an actor and a United Nations special envoy. What is your favorite place?
AJ: My favorite place is somewhere I’ve never been. I like to be dropped into the middle of something new. I enjoy being out of my element. I want the children to grow up in the world—not just learning about it but living it and having friends around the world. Next year we break ground on a home in Africa.
Are you going back to Cambodia soon?
AJ: We got a call the other day informing us that chipmunks have moved into the house. They asked if we should remove them, and Vivienne was very clear that we needed to cover the wires and let them stay. However, the local snakes may have their own opinion on that. The last time I stayed there, I heard screaming down the hall because a friend had found a giant lizard under their pillow. Clearly, the animals are there more than I am and they feel it is their home.
You talk about wanting to encourage your children to explore the world, including the world of ideas and expression. Can you give a specific example of a time when you and your family personally butted up against these kinds of unspoken societal limits?
AJ: I would love to live abroad and will do so as soon as my
children are 18. Right now I’m having to base where their father chooses to live.
You say you want freedom for others. What do you mean?
AJ: I do, and not just for those who are oppressed or living with limited rights. I often ask people, “What is it you’ve always wanted to do?” Ninety percent of the time it is an attainable goal and something they admit they could have already done. I think the challenge is to ask yourself what you’ve always wanted to do, and do it. Don’t just be comfortable with what is generally accepted, but find the new. Find your oxygen, your originality, your own voice. Live more fully. Rebel. Resist. Question. Be curious. Explore. Go outside what is comfortable to you. Say the thing you’ve been afraid to say. Put down this magazine, and go and do one thing today you’ve never done before.
ANGELINA'S MISSION
Angelina Jolie is Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, after 18 years with the agency, and Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She is also cofounder of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, a global campaign against war-zone rape.
GET THE LATEST ISSUE OF BAZAAR
