I Want To Eat You

Introducing Angelina Jolie, 21st-century Brigitte Bardot and ravenous antidote to Hollywood's cast of bland blonde leading ladies.

Angelina Jolie eats nothing but red meat. She would also like to eat you. Neither of these things may be true - but the fact that she even says them sets her apart from Hollywood's pale and uninteresting set. Jolie is no Winona, Winslet or Paltrow. Cut off her head and you'll find the words "crash and burn" written through her neck like a stick of rock.

Angelina Jolie is that rare thing in an era of monochrome celebrities, a Hollywood actress who declares she's "mad" and probably is. Possibly insane, certainly controversial, sexy as hell. She has the oversexed look of a Hollywood nymphet on heat - all werewolf wet lips, more curves than a Monaco chicane and eyes that don't say "come to bed," but hold their breath and stamp their foot. Angelina Jolie is this century's Brigitte Bardot and this decade's first hanging in the big-lipped gallerie du sex (most recent incumbent, Beatrice Dalle).

Why does she talk about sex in every interview? "Because personally, I need more sex, OK?" she says. "Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world." The you're gonna be busy. "That's OK," she says. "I get bored real easy."

But you're a woman who is perceived as the sex symbol for the new millennium; an intelligent woman, in touch with the animal within. If sex is the medium, then surely you are to sex a dolphin is to water?

"Yeah, considering I've never really done a sex film and I'm completely single," she replies, her voce dripping. "And I've only ever been with four people in my life. I guess when I get attached to someone, it's hard to get me off."

Signs that Angelina was going to be a lot more interesting than your average self-help Hollywood waif came fairly early on in a career that has climbed spectacularly from oblivion (debuting as a bionic martial artist in the brainless Cyborg 2) to award winning (receiving three Golden Globes and an Oscar acknowledgement) in little over six years.

An early headline grabber was her admission that she had to give up a modeling career because she was too scarred &endash; she has an X on her arm, a slice on her stomach, and a nick on her neck. "You're young, you're crazy, you're in bed and you've got knives," she said at the time. "So shit happens." Yes, but not, I suspect, in bed with Gweneth Paltrow. "I was being very honest about it for all those people that have done it," she says now. "But people don't explain it in the press, they make it sound cool and shallow."

The there are the tattoos. Dragons, a cross, some tribal markings and on her arm a Tennessee Williams quote: "A prayer for the Wild at heart, kept in cages." She also has, "that which nourishes me, destroys me" written in one of those where the sun don't shine. "I think that can be a bit annoying for anyone who gets my pants off. I think they get a little confused. There again, it's in Latin ["Quod me nutrit me destruit"], so I guess it's only going to affect the intelligent ones! Everyone I've shown it to has understood." And if they don't? "Well, they'll have that in their life one day."

Angelina had exactly that in her life when she met Jonny Lee "Sick Boy" Miller on the set of 1995's cyber-crap flick Hackers. They married a year later. She was 20 and at the ceremony she wrote his name on her shirt in her own blood. "I was married for three years and completely faithful and in love," she says (now the divorce has come through). "And I still think he's the greatest guy in the world."

Her most recent shock to the body cultural came when a US magazine's readers voted her the "actress most straight women would like to have sex with". When told of this Angelina replied, "That's OK, because I'm the actress most likely to have sex with them." Journalists have since been obsessed with what one called her "coy bisexuality".

"I was open about it because I wanted people to know that I had been with a woman. I spoke about it because I'd discovered something wonderful and I thought people should know my experience was very real, very normal and there were a lot of things I learnt," she says. "It was beautiful and different so I thought I would share it. But people decided to make it shocking. It was the same with the knives…" she says, sounding exasperated.

Jolie seems constantly surprised that people keep leaping on the things she says. "I never try and be controversial," she says. "and yet somehow I always seem to end up being just that."

Which is better than being remembered for having a famous dad. When the actor Jon Voight split from Angelina's mum (Actress Marcheline Bertrand), she was still a baby but he left her with more than just his acting genes, he deliberately gave her and her brother middle names which could be used to escape his shadow. "It's far easier to walk into an interview and not have to be as good as Jon Voight and know that it isn't about trying to get a script to him either."

Are there plans to work together? I ask thinking a Voight/Jolie double act could bring levels of intensity to the screen that are seldom seen from her chick-flick colleagues. "I wanted us to remake Cannonball Run," she says, "but he won't show anyone that side of his personality."

Despite the soundbites, it's for her acting that Jolie should be remembered. She won a second Golden Globe for her role as the tragic lesbian supermodel Gia Carangi in 1998's Gia and has since won another Globe (and an Oscar nomination) for her remarkable performance in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted. She has also appeared as the deranged sex interest in Mike Newell's air traffic-control comedy, Pushing Tin, and as the eyes and ears of crippled cop Denzel Washington in the serial-killer movie The Bone Collector. ("The best sex of my life, though Denzel was a quadriplegic and we never touched, having him look into my eyes was more scary than having someone eat me.") Later this year she stars alongside Nicolas Cage and Vinnie Jones in a remake of the Seventies car thief movie, Gone in 60 Seconds.

In Girl, Interrupted (an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's memoir about a Massachusetts mental institution in the sixties) she plays Lisa, the sociopath counterpoint to Winnona Ryder's Sylvia Plath-a-like Kaysen. On first meeting, Lisa is exciting and charismatic, a burst of light in the morgue - like closed ward. It's only when you've seen the damaging effects on the people around her that you realize how dangerous her condition is. Then you glimpse the dark side: the breakdowns she precipitates, and the suicide she eventually triggers as thoughtlessly as a cat toying with a mouse.

Jolie spent a lot of time defending her character, before deciding if Lisa was insane, then so was she. "If sane is thinking there's something wrong with being different, then I'd rather be completely fucking mental," she says, making a play for the Actress Most Likely To Fuck Up Your Life Award. "Just because someone is open and uninhibited doesn't mean you should tie her down and shoot her up full of shit. The more people realize that, the more I'm free to be who I am."

These are refreshing words in an industry where fear of being "dark" is often an excuse for just being bland. "People kept writing that Lisa's sexual, although I don't touch anyone," she says. "Whereas Winona's character has sex with a whole bunch of people, but no one accuses her of being 'sexual'. But I felt very sexual when I was doing it. I wanted to eat everyone and I do still.

"People say to me, 'Be careful what you talk about. Don't talk about things that are weird.' But why are we all doing this if we're not going to be who we are? What's the point in writing an article trying to figure out who someone is, if the subject is afraid to show themselves to the world?"

None at all. Which is why Angelina Jolie will be remembered as much for being a "bad girl" with something to say, as for her onscreen magnetism. Which is a hell of a lot better that being remembered for being Gwyneth Paltrow.

Official: why Angelina is the anti-Gwyneth But do gentlemen prefer bland? Jolie and Paltrow go head-to-head

Born

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow in Los Angeles, California, September 28, 1973, to director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner.

Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California, June 4, 1975, to actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand.

Public perception

That English actress who used to be married to Brad Pitt.

That American actress who used to be married to Sick Boy.

Appearance

Tall, wafer-thin, delicate beauty.

Legs like a giraffe, lips like ripe fruit, tattoos.

Voted by magazine readers

"Most stuck-up." (US teen mag)

"Actress our readers would most like to have sex with" (US women's mag)

Has dated

Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and David Schwimmer.

Jonny Lee Miller, two other blokes and a woman.

Has said

"Beauty to me is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick."

"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives. So shit happens."

Additional talents

"Me habla espaņol"

Can get ten chocolate digestives in her mouth. Without breaking them.

Interesting factoid

She's a natural blonde.

Collects knives, has an interest in mortuary science.