Rome (pronounced /rəʊm/; Italian: Roma, pronounced /’roma/; Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and Lazio,[2] and is Italy’s largest and most populous city, with more than 2.7 million residents,[3] and a metropolitan area of almost 4 million inhabitants. It is located in the central-western portion of the Italian peninsula, on the Tiber river.

Rome stands on top of more than two and a half thousand years of history, was once the largest city in the world and a major centre of Western civilisation. Rome is still the seat of the Roman Catholic Church which controls the Vatican City as its sovereign territory, an enclave of Rome.

Today, Rome is a modern and cosmopolitan city and the third most-visited tourist destination in the European Union.[4] Rome’s international airport, Fiumicino, is the largest in Italy and the city hosts the head offices of the vast majority of the major Italian companies, as well as the headquarters of three of the world’s 100 largest companies: Enel, ENI, and Telecom Italia.

As one of the few major European cities that escaped World War II relatively unscathed, central Rome remains essentially Renaissance and Baroque in character. The historic centre of Rome is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Contents

* 1 History
o 1.1 From founding to Empire
o 1.2 Fall of the Empire and Middle Ages
o 1.3 Renaissance Rome
o 1.4 Towards the reunification of Italy
o 1.5 20th century
* 2 Government
o 2.1 Local
o 2.2 National
o 2.3 Administrative divisions
* 3 Geography
o 3.1 Location
o 3.2 Topography
o 3.3 Climate
* 4 Demography
o 4.1 Ethnic groups
o 4.2 Religion
* 5 Cityscape
o 5.1 Architecture
+ 5.1.1 Ancient Rome
+ 5.1.2 Medieval
+ 5.1.3 Renaissance and Baroque
+ 5.1.4 Neoclassicism
+ 5.1.5 Fascist architecture
o 5.2 Public parks and nature reserves
o 5.3 Museums and galleries
* 6 Economy
* 7 Culture
o 7.1 Language
o 7.2 Education
o 7.3 Music
o 7.4 Cinema
o 7.5 Media
o 7.6 Sports
* 8 Transportation
o 8.1 Airports
o 8.2 Road
o 8.3 Rail
o 8.4 Buses and trams
o 8.5 Metro
* 9 Sister and partner cities
o 9.1 Sister city
o 9.2 Partner cities
* 10 International entities, organisations and involvement
* 11 See also
* 12 References
* 13 Notes
* 14 Documentaries
* 15 External links

History

From founding to Empire

Capitoline Wolf suckles the infant twins Romulus and Remus

According to a legend, Rome was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus on April 21, 753 BC.[7]. Archaeological evidence supports the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built in the area of the future Roman Forum. While some archaeologists argue that Rome was indeed founded in the middle of the 8th century BC, the date is subject to controversy.[8] The original settlement developed into the capital of the Roman Kingdom (ruled by a succession of seven kings, according to tradition), and then the Roman Republic (from 510 BC, governed by the Senate), and finally the Roman Empire (from 27 BC, ruled by an Emperor). This success depended on military conquest, commercial predominance, as well as selective assimilation of neighbouring civilizations, most notably the Etruscans and Greeks. From the its foundation, Rome was undefeated in war, although losing occasional battles, until 386 BC when Rome was occupied by the Celts (one of the three main Gallic tribes), and then recovered by Romans in the same year.[9] According to the history, the Gauls offered to deliver Rome back to its people for a thousand pounds of gold, but the Romans refused, preferring to take back their city by force of arms rather than ever admitting defeat.

Roman dominance expanded over most of Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while its population surpassed one million inhabitants. For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest and largest city in the Western world, and remained so after the Empire started to decline and was split, even if it ultimately lost its capital status to Milan and then Ravenna, and was surpassed in prestige by the Eastern capital Constantinople.

Fall of the Empire and Middle Ages

Fifteenth-century miniature depicting the Sack of Rome of 410.

With the reign of Constantine I, the Bishop of Rome gained political as well as religious importance, eventually becoming known as the Pope and establishing Rome as the centre of the Catholic Church. After the Sack of Rome in 410 AD by Alaric I and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, Rome alternated between Byzantine and plundering by Germanic barbarians. Its population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation. Rome remained nominally part of the Byzantine Empire rule until 751 AD when the Lombards finally abolished the Exarchate of Ravenna. In 756, Pepin the Short gave the pope temporal jurisdiction over Rome and surrounding areas, thus creating the Papal States.

Rome remained the capital of the Papal States until its annexation into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870; the city became a major pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages and the focus of struggles between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire starting with Charlemagne, who was crowned its first emperor in Rome in 800 by Pope Leo III. Apart from brief periods as an independent city during the Middle Ages, Rome kept its status of Papal capital and “holy city” for centuries, even when the Pope briefly relocated to Avignon (1309–1337).

Renaissance Rome

The latter half of the 15th century saw the seat of the Italian Renaissance move to Rome from Florence. The popes wanted to equal and surpass the grandeur of other Italian cities and to this end created ever more extravagant churches, bridges and public spaces, including a new Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, Ponte Sisto (the first bridge to be built across the Tiber since antiquity), and Piazza Navona. The Popes were also patrians of the arts engaging such artists as Michelangelo, Perugino, Raphael, Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli and Cosimo Rosselli.

The period was also infamous for papal corruption with many popes fathering children, and engaging in nepotism and simony. The corruption of the Popes and the extravagance of their building projects led, in part, to the Reformation and, in turn, the Counter-reformation.

Towards the reunification of Italy

Garibaldi defends the Roman Republic in 1849.

Italy became caught up in the nationalistic turmoils of the 19th century and twice gained and lost a short-lived independence. Rome became the focus of hopes of Italian reunification when the rest of Italy was reunited under the Kingdom of Italy with a temporary capital at Florence. In 1861 Rome was declared the capital of Italy even though it was still under the control of the Pope. During the 1860s the last vestiges of the Papal states were under French protection. And it was only when this was lifted in 1870, owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, that Italian troops were able to capture Rome.

20th century

After a victorious World War I, Rome witnessed the rise to power of Italian fascism guided by Benito Mussolini, who marched on the city in 1922, eventually declared a new Empire and allied Italy with Nazi Germany. This was a period of rapid growth in population, from the 212,000 people at the time of unification to more than 1,000,000, but this trend was halted by World War II, during which Rome was damaged by both Allied forces bombing and Nazi occupation; after the execution of Mussolini and the end of the war, a 1946 referendum abolished the monarchy in favour of the Italian Republic.

Rome grew momentously after the war, as one of the driving forces behind the “Italian economic miracle” of post-war reconstruction and modernisation. It became a fashionable city in the 1950s and early 1960s, the years of la dolce vita (”the sweet life”), and a new rising trend in population continued till the mid-1980s, when the comune had more than 2,800,000 residents; after that, population started to slowly decline as more residents moved to nearby surburbs.

Government

The Quirinal Palace, official residence of the President of the Italian Republic.
The Quirinal Palace, official residence of the President of the Italian Republic.

Local

Rome constitutes one of Italy’s 8,101 comunes, albeit the largest both by extent and population. It is governed by a Mayor, currently Giovanni Alemanno, and a city council. The seat of the comune is in on the Capitoline Hill the historic seat of government in Rome. The local administration in Rome is commonly referred to as “Campidoglio”, the name of the hill in Roman dialect.

National

Rome is the national capital of Italy and is the seat of the Italian Government. The official residences of the President of the Italian Republic and the Italian Prime Minister, the seats of both houses of the Italian Parliament and that of the Italian Constitutional Court are located in the historic centre. While the state ministries are spread out around the city. These include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which is located in Palazzo della Farnesina near the Olympic stadium.

Administrative divisions

Rome is divided into 19 administrative areas, called municipi or municipalities. They were created administrative reasons and to increase decentralisation in the city. Each municipality is governed by a president and a council of four members who are elected by the denizens of the municipality every five years. The municipalities frequently divide the traditional, non-administrative divisions of the city.

Rome is also divided into differing types of non-administrative divisions. The historic centre is divided into 22 rioni, all of which are located within the Aurelian walls except Prati and Borgo. After the designation of the newest and last rione, Prati, newer districts of the city were designated as quarters. There are 35 of these and they go all the way to the sea at Ostia, where they are called marine quarters. Rome also has six officially designated suburban zones and 52 agricultural zones. Many of the latter, however, have actuality been subject to considerable development.

Geography

Location

Rome is in the Lazio region of central Italy on the Tiber river (Italian: Tevere). The original settlement developed on hills which faced onto a ford beside the Tiber island, the only natural ford on the river. The historic centre of Rome was build on seven hills: the Aventine Hill, the Caelian Hill, the Capitoline Hill, the Esquiline Hill, the Palatine Hill, the Quirinal Hill, and the Viminal Hill. The city is also traversed by another river the Aniene with joins the Tiber to the north of the historic centre.

Although the city centre is about 24 kilometres (14.9 mi) inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea, the city territory extends to the very shore, where the south-western Ostia district is located. The altitude of the central part of Rome ranges from 13 m (43 ft) above sea level (at the base of the Pantheon) to 139 m (456 ft) above sea level (the peak of Monte Mario).[10] The comune of Rome covers an overall area of about 1,285 km2 (496 sq mi), including many green areas.

Topography

Rome seen from satellite

Historically the urban limits of Rome were considered to be the area within the city walls. Originally these were the Servian Wall which was built twelve years after Gauls’ sack of the city in 390 BC. This contained most of the Esquiline and Caelian hills, as well as the whole of the other five. Rome grew out of the Servian Wall, but no more walls were constructed until almost 700 years later, when in 270 AD Emprior Aurelian began building the Aurelian Walls. These were almost 19 kilometres (12 mi) long, and were still the walls the troops of the Kingdom of Italy had to breach to enter the city in 1870. Modern Romans frequently consider the city’s urban area to be delimited by its ring-road, the Grande Raccordo Anulare, which circles the city-centre at a distance of about 10km.

The Comune of Rome, however, covers considerably more territory and extends to the sea at Ostia, the largest town in Italy not to be a comune in its own right. The comune covers an area roughly three time the total area within the Raccordo and is comparable in area to the entire provinces of Milan and Naples, and to an area six times the size of the territory of these cities. The comune also includes considerable areas of abandoned march land which is neither suitable for agriculture nor for urban development.

Consequently the density of the comume is not that high, the communal territory being divided between strongly urbanised areas with areas designated as parks, nature reserves and agricultural use. The Province of Rome is the largest by area in Italy. At 5.352 km² its dimensions are comparable to the region of Liguria and more than three times the size of the greater metropolitan area of London.

Climate

Rome enjoys a typical Mediterranean climate which characterizes the Mediterranean coasts of Italy. It is at its most comfortable from April through June, and from mid-September to October; in particular, the Roman ottobrate (which can be roughly translated as the “beautiful October days”) are famously known as sunny and warm days. By August, the temperature during the heat of the day often exceeds 32 °C (90 °F). Traditionally, many businesses closed during August, and Romans abandoned the city for holiday resorts. In more recent years, however, in response to growing tourism and changing work habits, the city is increasingly staying open for the whole summer. The average high temperature in December is about 13 °C (57 °F), but below zero lows are not uncommon.

Demography

At the time of emperor Augustus, Rome was the largest city in the world, and probably the largest ever built until the nineteenth century. Estimates of its peak population range from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people with 1 to 2 million being most popular with historians. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city’s population fell dramatically to around less than 50,000 people, and continued to either stagnate or shrink until the Renaissance.

When the Kingdom of Italy annexed Rome in 1870, it had a population of about 200,000, which rapidly increased to 600,000 at the eve of World War I. The fascist regime of Mussolini tried to block an excessive demographic rise of the city, but failed to prevent it from reaching one million people by 1931. After the second world war, growth continued, helped by a post-war economic boom. A construction boom also created a large number of suburbs during the 1950s and 1960s

Map depicting late ancient Rome

Year Population
350 BC 30.000
250 BC 150.000
44 BC 1.000.000
120 1.650.000
330 600.000
410 200.000
530 50.000
650 20.000
1000 20.000
1400 20.000
1526 50.000-60.000
1528 20.000

Year Population
1600 100.000
1750 156.000
1800 163.000
1820 139.900
1850 175.000
1853 175.800
1858 182.600
1861 194.500
1871 212.432
1881 273.952
1901 422.411
1911 518.917

Year Population
1921 660.235
1931 930.926
1936 1.150.589
1951 1.651.754
1961 2.188.160
1971 2.781.993
1981 2.840.259
1991 2.775.250
2001 2.663.182
2007 2.718.768

In 2007, there were 2,718,768 people residing in Rome (in which some 4 million live in the greater Rome area), located in the province of Rome, Lazio, of whom 47.2% were male and 52.8% were female. Minors (children ages 18 and younger) totalled 17.00 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number 20.76 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Rome resident is 43 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Rome grew by 6.54 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent.[12] The current birth rate of Rome is 9.10 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.

Ethnic groups

As of 2006, 92.63% of the population was Italian. The largest other ethnic groups came from other European countries (mostly from Romania and Poland): 3.14%, East Asia (mostly Filipino): 1.28%, and the Americas (mostly from Peru): 1.09%. It is also important to note that there are tens of thousands of illegal migrants living in Rome.

Religion

Rome is the centre of the Roman Catholic religion and much in common with the rest of Italy, the large majority of Romans are Roman Catholics. In recent years, the Islamic community in Rome has grown significantly, in great part due to immigration from North African and Middle Eastern countries into the city. As a consequence of this trend, the city promoted the building of the largest mosque in Europe, which was designed by architect Paolo Portoghesi and inaugurated on 21 June 1995.

Cityscape

Panorama of Rome from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Architecture

Ancient Rome

The Pantheon.

One of the symbols of Rome is the Colosseum (70-80 AD), the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire. Originally capable of seating 60,000 spectators, it was used for gladiatorial combat. The list of the very important monuments of ancient Rome includes the Roman Forum, the Domus Aurea, the Pantheon, Trajan’s Column, Trajan’s Market, the Catacombs, the Circus Maximus, the Baths of Caracalla, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis, the Arch of Constantine, the Pyramid of Cestius, and the Bocca della Verità.

Medieval

Often overlooked, Rome’s medieval heritage is one of the largest in Italian cities. Basilicas dating from the Paleochristian age include Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo Fuori le Mura (the latter largely rebuilt in the 19th century), both housing precious 4th century AD mosaics. Later notable medieval mosaic and fresco art can be also found in the churches of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santi Quattro Coronati and Santa Prassede. Lay buildings include a number of towers, the largest being the Torre delle Milizie and the Torre dei Conti, both next the Roman Forum, and the huge staircase leading to the basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.

Renaissance and Baroque

Saint Peter’s Square.

Rome was a major world centre of the Renaissance, second only to Florence, and was profoundly affected by the movement. The most impressive masterpiece of Renaissance architecture in Rome is the Piazza del Campidoglio by Michelangelo, along with the Palazzo Senatorio, seat of the city government. During this period, the great aristocratic families of Rome used to build opulent dwellings as the Palazzo del Quirinale (now seat of the President of the Italian Republic), the Palazzo Venezia, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo Barberini, the Palazzo Chigi (now seat of the Italian Prime Minister), the Palazzo Spada, the Palazzo della Cancelleria, and the Villa Farnesina.

Rome is also famous for her huge and majestic squares (often adorned with obelisks), many of which were built in the 17th century. The principal squares are Piazza Navona, Piazza di Spagna, Campo de’ Fiori, Piazza Venezia, Piazza Farnese and Piazza della Minerva. One of the most emblematic examples of the baroque art is the Fontana di Trevi by Nicola Salvi. Other notable baroque palaces of 17th century are the Palazzo Madama, now seat of the Italian Senate and the Palazzo Montecitorio, now seat of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy.

Neoclassicism

The Vittorio Emanuele Monument.

In 1870, Rome became capital city of the new Kingdom of Italy. During this time, neoclassicism, a building style influenced by the architecture of antiquity, became a predominant influence in Roman architecture. In this period many great palaces in neoclassical styles were built to host ministries, embassies and other governing agencies. One of the best-known symbol of Roman neoclassicism is the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II or “Altar of Fatherland”, where the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, that represents the 650,000 Italians that fell in World War I, is located.

Fascist architecture

The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana.

The Fascist regime that ruled in Italy between 1922 and 1943 developed an architectural style which was characterized by its links with ancient Roman architecture. The most important fascist site in Rome is the E.U.R. district, designed in 1938 by Marcello Piacentini. It was originally conceived for the 1942 world exhibition, and was called “E.42″ (”Esposizione 42″). The world exhibition, however, never took place because Italy entered the Second World War in 1940. The most representative building of the Fascist style at E.U.R. is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (1938-1943), the iconic design of which has been labelled the cubic or Square Colosseum.

After World War II, the Roman authorities found that they already had the seed of an off-centre business district that other capitals were still planning (London Docklands and La Defense in Paris). Also the Palazzo della Farnesina, the current seat of Italian Foreign Ministry, was designed in 1935 in fascist style.

Public parks and nature reserves
Villa Borghese: the 19th century “Temple of Aesculapius” built purely as a landscape feature, influenced by the lake at Stourhead, Wiltshire, England.
Villa Borghese: the 19th century “Temple of Aesculapius” built purely as a landscape feature, influenced by the lake at Stourhead, Wiltshire, England.

Public parks and nature reserves cover a large area in Rome, and the city has one of the largest areas of green space amongst European capitals.[13]. The most notable part of this green space is represented by the large number of villas and landscaped gardens created by the Italian aristocracy. While many villas were destroyed during the building boom of the late 19th century but a great many nonetheless remain. The most notable of these are Villa Borghese, Villa Ada and Villa Doria Pamphili.

Of much more recent origin, Rome has a number of regional parks including the Pineto Regional Park and the Appian Way Regional Park. There are also nature reserves at Marcigliana, and at Tenuta di Castelporziano.

Museums and galleries

The most important museums and galleries of Rome include the National Museum of Rome, the Museum of Roman Civilization, the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum, the Capitoline Museums, the Borghese Gallery, the Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo, and the National Gallery of Modern Art.

Economy

Eni’s headquarters in EUR, Rome’s business district

Modern day Rome has a dynamic and diverse economy with thriving technologies, communications, and service sectors. It produces 6.7% of the national GDP (more than any other city in Italy). Rome grows +4,4% annually and continues to grow at a higher rate in comparison to any other city in the rest of the country. Following World War II Rome’s economic growth began to overtake its rivals,[citation needed] Naples and Milan, although a traditional rivalry persists with Milan today. Tourism is inevitably one of Rome’s chief industries, with numerous notable museums including the Vatican Museum, the Borghese Gallery, and the Musei Capitolini. Rome is also the hub of the Italian film industry, thanks to the Cinecittà studios. The city is also a centre for banking as well as electronics and aerospace industries. Numerous international headquarters, government ministries, conference centres, sports venues and museums are located in Rome’s principal business districts: the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR); the Torrino (further south from the EUR); the Magliana; the Parco de’ Medici-Laurentina and the so-called Tiburtina-valley along the ancient Via Tiburtina.

Culture

Language

The original language of Rome was Latin, which evolved during the Middle Ages into Italian. The latter emerged as the confluence of various regional dialects, among which the Tuscan dialect predominated, but the population of Rome also developed its own dialect, the Romanesco. The ancient romanesco, used during the Middle Ages, was a southern Italian dialect, very close to the Neapolitan. The influence of the Florentine culture during the renaissance, and, above all, the immigration to Rome of many Florentines who were among the two Medici Popes’ (Leo X and Clement VII) suite, caused a strong change of the dialect, which resembled more the Tuscan varieties (the immigration of Florentines was mainly due to the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the subsequent demographic decrease). This remained largely confined to Rome until the 19th century, but then expanded to other zones of Lazio (Civitavecchia, Latina), from the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the rising population of Rome and to better transportation systems. As a consequence, Romanesco abandoned its traditional forms to mutate into the dialect spoken within the city, which is more similar to standard Italian, although remaining distinct from other Romanesco-influenced local dialects of Lazio. Dialectal literature in the traditional form Romanesco includes the works of such authors as Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Trilussa, and Cesare Pascarella. Contemporary Romanesco is mainly represented by popular actors such as Aldo Fabrizi, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Anna Magnani, Gigi Proietti, Enrico Montesano, and Carlo Verdone.

Education

Rome is a nation-wide centre for higher education. Its first university, La Sapienza (founded in 1303), is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, with more than 150,000 students attending.[citation needed] Two new public universities were founded: Tor Vergata in 1982, and Roma Tre in 1992, although the latter has now become larger than the former. Rome also contains a large number of pontifical universities and institutes, including the Pontifical Gregorian University (The oldest Jesuit university in the world, founded in 1551), the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others. The city also hosts various private universities, such as the LUMSA, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Roman centre), the LUISS, Istituto Europeo di Design, the St. John’s University, the John Cabot University, the IUSM, the American University of Rome, the Scuola Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Link Campus of Malta, the S. Pio V University of Rome, and the Università Campus Bio-Medico. Rome is also the location of the John Felice Rome Centre, a campus of Loyola University Chicago.

Music

Rome is an important centre for music. It hosts the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (founded in 1585), for which new concert halls have been built in the new Parco della Musica, one of the largest musical venues in the world. Rome also has an opera house, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as well as several minor musical institutions. The city also played host to the Eurovision Song Contest in 1991 and the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2004.

Cinema

Set of Gangs of New York in Cinecittà studios, Rome.

Rome hosts the Cinecittà Studios, the largest film and television production facility in continental Europe and the centre of the Italian cinema, where a large number of today’s biggest box office hits are filmed. The 99 acre (40 ha) studio complex is 5.6 miles (9 km) from the centre of Rome and is part of one of the biggest production communities in the world, second only to Hollywood, with well over 5,000 professionals - from period costume makers to visual effects specialists. More than 3,000 productions have been made on its lot, from recent features like The Passion of the Christ, Gangs of New York, HBO’s Rome, The Life Aquatic and Dino De Laurentiis’ Decameron, to such cinema classics as Ben Hur, Cleopatra and the films of Federico Fellini.

Founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini, the studios were bombed by the Western Allies during World War II. In the 1950s, Cinecittà was the filming location for several large American film productions, and subsequently became the studio most closely associated with Federico Fellini. Today Cinecittà is the only studio in the world with pre-production, production and full post-production facilities on one lot, allowing directors and producers to walk in with their script and “walk out” with a completed film.

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (commonly known as A Christmas Carol) is a novella by Charles Dickens[1] first published on December 19, 1843 with illustrations by John Leech.[2] The first of the author’s five “Christmas books”, the story was an instant success, selling over six thousand copies in one week, and the tale has become one of the most popular and enduring Christmas stories of all time.

Contemporaries noted that the story’s popularity played a critical role in redefining the importance of Christmas and the major sentiments associated with the holiday. A Christmas Carol was written during a time of decline in the old Christmas traditions.[3] “If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease”, said English poet Thomas Hood.

Plot introduction

A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one night. Mr. Scrooge is a financier/money-changer who has devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. He holds anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season.

Plot summary

Ebenezer Scrooge encounters “Ignorance” and “Want” in A Christmas Carol.
Ebenezer Scrooge encounters “Ignorance” and “Want” in A Christmas Carol.

Stave I: Marley’s Ghost

On a snowy Christmas Eve, seven years to the day after the death of his business partner Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge and his downtrodden clerk Bob Cratchit are at work in Scrooge’s counting-house. Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, arrives with seasonal greetings and an invitation to Christmas dinner, but Scrooge dismisses him with “Bah! Humbug!”, declaring that Christmas is a fraud. Two gentlemen collecting charitable donations for the poor are likewise rebuffed by Scrooge, he insists that the poor laws and workhouses are sufficient to care for the poor, and that “If they would rather die [than go there], they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”. As he and his clerk prepare to leave, he grudgingly permits Cratchit one day’s paid holiday the following day.

After dinner, Scrooge returns home to his cheerless rooms in an otherwise deserted building, and a series of supernatural experiences begins. His door knocker appears to transform into Marley’s face; a “locomotive hearse” seems to mount the dark stairs ahead of him; the pictures on the tiles in his fireplace transform into images of Marley’s face. Finally all the bells in the house ring loudly, there is a clanking of chains in the cellar and on the stairs, and the ghost of Marley passes through the closed door into the room.

The ghost warns Scrooge that if he does not change his ways, he will suffer Marley’s fate. He will walk the earth eternally after death, invisible among his fellow men, burdened with chains, seeing the misery and suffering he could have alleviated in his life but now powerless to intervene. Marley has arranged Scrooge’s only chance of redemption: three spirits will visit him on successive nights, and they may help change him and save him from his fate. As Marley leaves, Scrooge gets a nightmare glimpse of the tormented spectres who drift unseen among the living, and, shattered, he falls into bed and sleeps.

Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits

The Ghost of Christmas Past, a strange mixture of young and old, male and female, with a light shining from the crown of its head, appears at the stroke of one. It leads Scrooge on a journey to some of his past Christmases, where key events shaped his life and character. He sees his late sister Fan, who intervened to rescue him from lonely exile at boarding school, and, recalling his recent treatment of Fan’s son Fred, Scrooge feels the first stirrings of regret. They revisit a merry Christmas party given by Fezziwig, Scrooge’s kindly apprentice-master, and Scrooge thinks guiltily of his own behaviour toward Bob Cratchit. Finally, he is reminded how his love of money lost him the love of his life, Belle, and the happiness this cost him. Furious, Scrooge turns on the spirit, snuffs it like a candle with its cap, and finds himself back in bed, where he instantly falls asleep.

Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits

Scrooge wakes at the stroke of one, confused to find it is still night. After a time he rises and finds the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, in an adjoining room, on a throne made of Christmas food and drink. This spirit, a great genial man in a green coat lined with fur, takes him through the bustling streets of London on the current Christmas morning, sprinkling the essence of Christmas onto the happy populace. They observe the meagre but happy Christmas celebrations of the Cratchit family and the sweet nature of their lame son Tiny Tim, and when the Spirit foretells an early death for the child if things remain unchanged, Scrooge is distraught. He is shown what others think of him: the Cratchits toast him, but reluctantly, and “a shadow was cast over the party for a full five minutes”. Scrooge’s nephew and his friends gently mock his miserly behaviour at their Christmas party, but Fred maintains his uncle’s potential for change, and Scrooge demonstrates a childlike enjoyment of the celebrations.

They travel far and wide, and see how even the most wretched of people mark Christmas in some way, whatever their circumstances. The Ghost, however, grows visibly older, and explains he must die that night. He shows Scrooge two pitiful children huddled under his robes who personify the major causes of suffering in the world, “Ignorance” and “Want”, with a grim warning that the former is especially harmful. At the end of the visitation, the bell strikes twelve. The Ghost of Christmas Present vanishes and the third spirit appears to Scrooge.

Stave IV: The Last of the Three Spirits

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes the form of a grim spectre, robed in black, who does not speak and whose body is entirely hidden except for one pointing hand. This spirit frightens Scrooge more than the others, and harrows him with a vision of a future Christmas with the Cratchit family bereft of Tiny Tim. A rich miser, whose death saddens nobody and whose home and corpse have been robbed by ghoulish attendants, is revealed to be Scrooge himself: this is the fate that awaits him. Without it explicitly being said, Scrooge learns that he can avoid the future he has been shown and alter the fate of Tiny Tim, but only if he changes. Weeping, he swears to do so, and awakes to find that all three spirits have visited in just one night, and that it is Christmas morning.

Stave V: The End of It

Scrooge changes his life and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul he was in his youth. He anonymously sends the Cratchits the biggest turkey in the butcher shop, meets the charity workers to pledge an unspecified but impressive amount of money, and spends Christmas Day with Fred and his wife.

The next day Scrooge catches his clerk arriving late and pretends to be his old miserly self, before revealing his new persona to an astonished Cratchit. He assists Bob and his family, becomes an adopted uncle to Tiny Tim, who does not die, and gains a reputation as a kind and generous man who embodies the spirit of Christmas in his life.

Explanation of the book’s title

Originally a medieval round dance and then a word for a particular type of ballad[5], by Dickens’ time the word carol had come closer to its modern meaning, being a joyful hymn specific to Christmas. Dickens takes this musical analogy further, dividing the novella into five “staves”, instead of chapters.

Characters

* Ebenezer Scrooge
* Bob Cratchit
* Fred (Scrooge’s nephew)
* Tiny Tim (son of Bob)
* Jacob Marley
* Ghost of Christmas Past
* Ghost of Christmas Present
* Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Supporting

* Two portly gentlemen collecting donations for “some slight provision for the poor and destitute” at Christmas
* Fezziwig
* Fan
* Belle
* Mrs. Cratchit
* Peter Cratchit
* Martha Cratchit
* Belinda Cratchit
* Two unnamed “smaller Cratchits”, a boy and a girl
* A young boy and girl, Ignorance and Want, respectively
* Dick Wilkins
* A trio of thieves who plunder Scrooge’s house after his death:
o Scrooge’s unnamed charwoman, who sells (among other things) his bed curtains and the shirt he was originally meant to be buried in (she took it off his dead body)
o Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge’s laundress
o An unnamed undertaker’s assistant
* Old Joe, a fence who buys the dead Scrooge’s belongings from the trio of thieves

Major themes

The story deals extensively with two of Dickens’ recurrent themes, social injustice and poverty, the relationship between the two, and their causes and effects. It was written to be abrupt and forceful with its message, with a working title of “The Sledgehammer.” The first edition of A Christmas Carol was illustrated by John Leech, a politically radical artist who in the cartoon “Substance and Shadow” printed earlier in 1843 had explicitly criticised artists who failed to address social issues. Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes to the welfare system known as the Poor Laws, changes which required among other things, welfare applicants to “work” on treadmills, as Scrooge points out. Dickens asks, in effect, for people to recognise the plight of those whom the Industrial Revolution has displaced and driven into poverty, and the obligation of society to provide for them humanely. Failure to do so, the writer implies through the personification of Ignorance and Want as ghastly children, will result in an unnamed “Doom” for those who, like Scrooge, believe their wealth and status qualifies them to sit in judgement on the poor rather than to assist them.

Scrooge “embodies all the selfishness and indifference of the prosperous classes who parrot phrases about the ‘surplus population’ and think their social responsibilities fully discharged when they have paid their taxes.”

Allusions to actual history, geography and current science

Scrooge offends the Ghost of Christmas Present by suggesting that the Spirit’s name is linked to a recent attempt to close bakers’ shops on Sundays and Christmas Day. (Poor people like the Cratchits, who had no oven at home, took their Sunday and Christmas meals to the bakers’ to be roasted just as Dickens describes in the book, because the law forbade bread to be baked on that day. Closing the shops would deprive them of what might be their only hot meat meal of the week.) The Spirit angrily retorts:

“There are some upon this earth of yours…who lay claim to know us, and who do their deed of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and to all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.” (The Ghost of Christmas Present, A Christmas Carol, Stave Three)

This is a reference to the repeated attempts during the 1830s of Sir Andrew Agnew, MP for Wigtownshire, to introduce a Sunday Observance Bill in Parliament which would have closed the bakeries and restricted many other Sunday pleasures of the poorer classes.[7] Dickens was violently opposed to Agnew’s plans and had attacked them in a pamphlet published under a pseudonym.

Dickens’ reading

A Christmas Carol was the subject of Dickens’ first ever public reading, given in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute on 27 December 1852. This was repeated three days later to an audience of ‘working people’, and was a great success by his own account and that of newspapers of the time. Over the years Dickens edited the piece down and adapted it for a listening, rather than reading, audience. Excerpts from A Christmas Carol remained part of Dickens’ public readings until his death.

Jennifer Eve Antoinette Garth (born April 3, 1972) is an American actress, best known for her roles of Kelly Taylor in Beverly Hills, 90210, its spinoff series 90210, and of Valerie Kelly Tyler in What I Like About You.

Early life

Jennifer Eve Garth was born in Illinois to John and Carolyn Garth, who each already had three children from different marriages. She grew up on a 25-acre horse ranch in Arcola, Illinois with her six older half-siblings: Johnny, Chuck, Lisa, Cammie, Wendy and Lynn. Jennie also lived in Tuscola, Illinois during her younger years. When Garth was 11, she and her family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. She took dancing lessons and did a little modeling while living there, at the time wanting to go to college and later start her own dance studio. At age 15, she was discovered and encouraged to pursue an acting career by a talent scout, who had seen her win a talent competition.

She dropped out of Greenway High School during her junior year, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles so she could become an actress. She later obtained her diploma in California. There, she started taking acting classes and went to auditions almost every day. After living in L.A. about four months, she landed the role of ‘Erica McCray’ on the NBC series A Brand New Life (1989).

Career

Garth is best known for her role as the beleaguered Kelly Taylor on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210. At various points in the series, Garth’s character was involved in a love triangle between Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) and Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestly), became a diet pill abuser, was trapped in a fire, became involved in a cult, used cocaine, was raped, shot, got amnesia and had a miscarriage. She and former costar Tiffani Thiessen are best friends, a stark contrast to the show, where Garth’s Kelly and Thiessen’s Valerie Malone were sworn enemies whose feuds were a large part of the plots in seasons five through eight.

Garth starred in the sitcom What I Like About You as Amanda Bynes’ sister Valerie Tyler. Along with Leslie Grossman and Amanda Bynes, she starred on the show for all four seasons. Garth’s story, “I Am Home,” was featured in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. She played the lead female role in the 1993 television production of Danielle Steel’s Star.

In May 2008, TV Guide confirmed that Garth will reprise the role of Kelly Taylor in the new CW spin off of Beverly Hills, 90210. Kelly will be on recurring status as a guidance counselor at West Beverly High.[1] The writers hope she will be able to have some scenes with Shannen Doherty who is reprising her 90210 role of Brenda Walsh.[2] It has been reported that Garth and Doherty’s characters will both have a romantic interest in the character Ryan Matthews (Ryan Eggold),[3] reminiscent of their old rivalry for former bad boy character Dylan McKay.

Dancing with the Stars

Jennie appeared on Season 5 of Dancing with the Stars and was paired with Derek Hough. Garth had consistently high scores throughout the entire competition and was one of the few contestants to maintain 8s and above after week 2. She was shockingly eliminated on the ninth week of competition finishing at a respectable fourth out of 12, after scoring her first perfect score of the competition with her Cha-Cha-Cha [4] while Marie Osmond (who came in last place for three weeks up to that point) remained in the competition. The audience gave her a standing ovation (something very uncommon in the show). Judge Len Goodman stated that it “was not her time to go”. In her exiting montage video, Derek Hough stated how proud he was of her for going on an emotional journey and improving from three 7’s to three 10’s.

Lindsay Dee Lohan(born July 2, 1986) is an American actress, model and pop music singer. Lohan started in show business as a child fashion model for magazine advertisement and television commercials. At age 10, she began her acting career in a soap opera; at 11, she made her motion picture debut by playing identical twins in Disney’s 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.

Lohan rose to stardom with her leading roles in the films Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded. Her subsequent roles include appearances in A Prairie Home Companion and Bobby. In 2004, Lohan launched a second career in pop music yielding the albums Speak (2004), A Little More Personal (Raw) (2005) and the forthcoming Spirit in the Dark (2008).Early life

Lohan was born in New York City and grew up in Merrick and Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island in New York. She is the eldest child of Donata “Dina” (née Sullivan) and Michael Lohan. Lohan has three younger siblings, all of whom were child models: Michael Jr., who appeared with her in The Parent Trap, sister Aliana, who is also an actress, and Dakota, the youngest Lohan child. Lohan is of Irish and Italian heritage and was raised as a Catholic.

Her maternal family were “well known Irish Catholic stalwarts” in Merrick, with her great-grandfather, John L Sullivan, being a co-founder of the Pro-life Party in Long Island.Lohan attended public school on Long Island. She finished her studies at home
through Laurel Springs Schoolof Ojai, California. Her father was sentenced to four years in prison in the late 1980s. In 2005, he was sent back to prison for nearly two years, released in March 2007, for “aggravated unlicensed driving” and attempted assault. Michael currently works with Teen Challenge.In December 2005, Michael and Dina Lohan signed a separation agreement.In 2007, Lohan’s parents announced that their divorce proceedings had been finalized.

Acting career

Early career success

Lohan’s debut as an actress on Another World.

Lohan began her career with Ford Models at age three, but found little work as a fashion model.She persisted and eventually appeared in more than 100 print-ads for companies like Toys “R” Us.She also modeled for Calvin Klein Kids (usually with siblings Michael and Ali) and Abercrombie Kids.

Lohan’s first auditions for television work did not go well; by the time she tried out for a Duncan Hines commercial, she told her mother that she would give up if she did not get the job.She was hired, and went on to appear in over 60 commercials, including a Jell-O spot with Bill Cosby. Her ad work led to roles in soap operas, and she was already considered a show-business veteran[13] in 1996 when she landed the role of Alexandra “Alli” Fowler on Another World, “where she delivered more dialogue than any other 10-year-old in daytime serials” of the time.

Lohan in dual roles in The Parent Trap (1998), her first feature film.

Lohan gave up Another World for the big screen when director Nancy Meyers cast her to play the dual roles of the estranged twin sisters who try to reunite their long-divorced parents (Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson) in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Trap was well-received for a family comedy, bringing in US$92 million worldwide.Film critic Janet Maslin found Lohan’s dual performances so forceful “that she seems to have been taking shy violet lessons from Sharon Stone.” Critic Kenneth Turan called Lohan “the soul of this film as much as Hayley Mills was of the original, and … she is more adept than her predecessor at creating two distinct personalities”.

She starred in two original television movies, Life-Size (2000) (with Tyra Banks) and Get a Clue (2002). She also played Bette Midler’s daughter in the first episode of the short-lived series, Bette (2000), but Lohan, then 14, quit when the production moved from New York to Los Angeles. In 2001, she hosted the ABC-TV commercial series commemorating Walt Disney’s 100th birthday during a rebroadcast of The Parent Trap.

Rise to fame and career development

Following a brief hiatus, Lohan won a lead role in another Disney remake: Freaky Friday (2003), starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Through 2005, Friday was Lohan’s biggest commercial film success, earning US$160 million worldwide.

In 2004, Lohan was given the lead in two films, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (her first feature that was not a remake) and Paramount’s Mean Girls, both released in 2004. Drama Queen was a modest success at the box office, grossing about US$30 million, but was a failure with critics. “Though still a promising star, Lohan will have to do a little penance before she’s forgiven for Confessions,” Robert K. Elder wrote.

Far more successful was Mean Girls, her first PG-13 (and first non-Disney) film. Her breakout lead performance pushed the critical and commercial hit to gross US$128 million worldwide, “cementing her status as the new teen movie queen,” wrote Brandon Gray.[21] “Lohan dazzles us once more,” said Steve Rhodes. “The smartly written script is a perfect match for her intelligent brand of comedy.”[22] Mean Girls was scripted by Tina Fey and featured several alumni of Saturday Night Live; Lohan was asked to host the show three times, in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

In 2005, Lohan became the first living person to have a “My Scene Goes Hollywood” doll released by Mattel. She also voiced herself in the direct-to-DVD feature film based on the dolls.

Lohan returned to Disney for Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), the fifth film in the Herbie series. Her popularity allowed her to choose from a wider variety of projects; Lohan felt Herbie would help her make the transition into more grown-up roles.”In most of my other films, I was in high school,” she said. “Here, [my character is] just out of college. It’s nice to be able to do something that I think will be acceptable to the fan base I’ve accumulated from my Disney movies, but subconsciously they’ll see me getting older and maturing.”Fully Loaded earned $144,146,816 worldwide.

Her next film in wide release, Just My Luck, opened in May 2006 to poor reviews and earned only $38 million worldwide.The following month, A Prairie Home Companion, in limited release ended its run with $25,648,948 globally.”Lohan rises to the occasion, delivering a rock-the-house version of ‘Frankie and Johnny’,” wrote Peter Travers.[27] Lohan completed filming the independent Emilio Estevez film, Bobby, in December 2005; the film débuted at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2006, and was released in theaters on November 23, 2006, though it earned a weak $19,560,892 worldwide with mixed reviews. She then appeared in Chapter 27 as a John Lennon fan who befriends Mark David Chapman (Jared Leto) on the day he murders the singer. It was filmed in New York between January and March of 2006. The film had trouble finding a distributor for the United States and received a very limited release. Chapter 27 was widely panned by critics, receiving a dismal 20% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Lohan was voted #10 on the list of “100 Sexiest Women” by readers of FHM.[29] Maxim placed her at #3 on its 2006 Hot 100 list.In 2007, Lohan placed at #1 on the Maxim “Hot 100″.
In February 2007, shortly after admitting herself to a medical rehabilitation facility, Lohan relinquished the role of Hester Worsley in a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. The role then passed to Jessica Biel. On May 11, 2007, Georgia Rule was released in which Lohan starred alongside Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda. The film — whose production received adverse publicity when a letter from a studio executive to Lohan criticizing her professionalism was made public — received mostly negative reviews. It grossed US$6.7 million at the box office in its opening weekend and to date has grossed over US$22 million worldwide.

On July 24, 2007, Lohan - in the wake of her arrest withdrew from a scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her starring role as a stripper in the film I Know Who Killed Me. The film premiered “to an abysmal $3.5 million”and earned Lohan two nominations for worst actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards. She came in first and second, tying with herself.

Entertainment Weekly quoted the head of a major film studio as saying, “Her career was over long before she had these troubles… Right now, she’d have to pay a studio to get herself into a movie.”The article continues, “There’s the L.A. bar scene that serves underage stars and Hollywood’s compulsion to turn child actors into products, plus a frenzied 21st-century media culture that has made Lohan and other celebs into exotic prey in flashbulb cages.” ABC News quoted publicist Michael Levine as calling Lohan unemployable “for the next 18 months.” The head of a talent agency agreed, noting that her personal issues likely made the insurance and other costs required for any film production to proceed prohibitively expensive.James Robinson, the producer of Georgia Rule, stated he would still like to work with her. “She’s a good person who’s making some bad choices. She needs time to get the proper medical care, but when she’s in the right emotional state, I’d put her in a movie right away…. She’s probably one of the most talented young women in the movie business today.”

In the February 25, 2008 Spring Fashion edition of New York, Lohan re-created Marilyn Monroe’s final photo shoot, known as the Last Sitting, including nudity.Her mother said doing the photo shoot was an “honor.”

Lohan makes a cameo in a music video for the single “Everyone Nose” by Pharrell-fronted band N*E*R*D. A song about the restroom drug usage of young party-goers, the video also has appearances by friends Cory Kennedy, Samantha Ronson, and rapper Kanye West. Shot in early April, a sneak preview of the video leaked onto Internet blogs in May, with the entire clip premiering a week later.

Lohan is the face of the 2008 Visa Swap UK fashion campaign. Lindsay was photographed for the campaign in early 2008 in Los Angeles, CA.[39]

Return to acting

Lohan was going to star in the movie Poor Things, but had to withdraw form the role due to scheduling conflicts.
Upon leaving rehab in 2007, Lohan began work on the tango biopic Dare to Love Me, the film’s release date is scheduled to be sometime in 2008. In late February 2008, it was announced that Lohan would be joining the cast of Ye Olde Times alongside Jack Black, however, it was later announced that Lohan is no longer a part of the movie. E! News has also recently reported Lohan’s involvement in the movie Manson Girls playing Manson Family cult member Nancy Pitman , however, she has recently withdrawn from this role to pursue other offers.

Lohan has been cast to star in the forthcoming film comedy Labor Pains, Lohan will play a young woman who pretends to be pregnant to avoid being fired.The film is slated to start filming in early June 2008.Lohan made a guest appearance on the season 2 finale of ABC’s Ugly Betty which aired on May 22, 2008; she played an old schoolmate of America Ferrera’s character Betty Suarez. Lohan is also expected to appear in five episodes of Ugly Betty next season.
Music career

Lohan in 2003

Hoping to become a triple threat - actor, singer and dancer - like her idol, Ann-Margret, Lohan began showcasing her singing talent through her films.[46] For the Freaky Friday soundtrack, she sang the closing theme, “Ultimate”; she also recorded four songs for the Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen soundtrack.

Producer Emilio Estefan, Jr. signed Lohan to a five-album production deal in 2002. “The minute I heard her sing, I knew she was gifted,” he said, “and [she] has an incredible ability to connect with her audience. I am very excited to be working with her.” Lohan — who said she was “extremely excited” — added, “I am surrounded by a group of very talented people.”[47] Two years later, Lohan signed a recording contract with Casablanca Records, headed by Tommy Mottola. Lohan is currently signed with Motown Records.

Speak (2004)

Her debut album, Speak, was released in December 2004, and peaked at number four on the Billboard 200. By early 2005, it was certified Platinum. Though primarily a pop album, Speak was introduced with the single “Rumors”, described by Rolling Stone as “a bass-heavy, angry club anthem”.[48] Its sexually suggestive video reached number one on MTV’s Total Request Live and was nominated for Best Pop Video at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. “Rumors” eventually earned a Gold certification in America.

The album spawned the second single “Over” and the third single “First”, which was featured in Lohan’s 2005 film Herbie: Fully Loaded. The music video also featured Herbie the Love Bug. Both music videos were directed by Jake Nava, who also directed the music video for “Rumors.”

“[W]ith just two hit films under her belt, Lohan decided it was time to turn [herself] into a multimedia, cross-platform star,” wrote Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic. “And so Speak was recorded quickly and rushed into the stores”. He called her music “a blend of old-fashioned, Britney-styled dance-pop and the anthemic, arena rock sound pioneered by fellow tween stars Hilary Duff and Ashlee Simpson. [However,] Lohan stands apart from the pack with her party-ready attitude and her husky voice”.[49]

A Little More Personal (Raw) (2005)

In December 2005, her second album, A Little More Personal (Raw), debuted at number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, but fell under the top 100 within six weeks. Reviews were unfavorable; critics called the album a “slick pop production.”[50] Slant magazine called it “contrived … for all the so-called weighty subject matter, there’s not much meat on these bones.”[51] Still, A Little More Personal (Raw) was certified Gold on January 18, 2006. The music video for the album’s first single, “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)” — directed by Lohan and featuring the acting debut of her sister, Ali — was a dramatization of the pain Lohan says her family has suffered at the hands of her father.[52] She said “It’s kind of offensive… I hope he sees the positive side of the video rather than the negative.”

The album’s second single was supposed to be “I Live for the Day.” Radio promos singles were pressed and released and sent to radio stations. However due to Lohan’s schedule, she was unable to promote or support the single as she did with her previous efforts. Eventually, since the single received absolutely no radio airplay or support, and the disappointing chart position and sales of the album, Casablanca Records cancelled “I Live for the Day” and moved forward with “If It’s Alright” as the second single. However plans for releasing “If It’s Alright” were later cancelled, as well as all other singles and promotion with the album. Therefore, A Little More Personal (Raw) was not as successful as her previous album, Speak. A Little More Personal (Raw), with little promotion, was still certified gold by the RIAA on January 18, 2006 after debuting on the Billboard 200 at #20, while “Speak” went platinum after debuting at #4.

Spirit in the Dark (2008)

Lohan’s third album, Spirit in the Dark, is set for release on 4 November 2008.[53][54] Lohan has promised a third studio album on multiple occasions and stated that she wants the album to be dance, hip-hop, and R&B - “kind of Kylie Minogue-meets-Rihanna”. She is working with J. R. Rotem, Stargate, Ne-Yo, Akon, Snoop Dogg, Bloodshy & Avant, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, The-Dream, The Neptunes, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and Timbaland. A song entitled “Bossy” was leaked and later officially released as a “buzz single” for the album and received a favourable reaction from consumers. Lohan will soon debut the entire album on KIIS-FM [radio show] with host Ryan Seacrest, who has heard most of the album and gave it a favorable review.[62]

Personal life

Lohan’s mugshot from the LA County Sheriff’s department.

Lohan and Hilary Duff became bitter enemies in 2002 when they simultaneously dated Aaron Carter; the feud continued for five years. However, in 2007, Lohan and Duff put the dispute behind them and became friends.[63] Lohan has also dated Wilmer Valderrama, Harry Morton and Calum Best. While seeking treatment at the Cirque Lodge in Utah, Lohan met and began dating Riley Giles; however, in late November 2007, it was announced that they had split up. Lohan’s mother, Dina Lohan said, “[Riley] took desperate measures to hurt Lindsay because she broke up with him”.

Lohan has had a series of car accidents that have been widely reported, with minor crashes in August 2004,[65] October 2005,[66] and November 2006, when Lohan suffered minor injuries because a paparazzo who was following her for a photograph hit her car. Police called the crash intentional, but prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to file criminal charges.

Lohan is also well known on the celebrity party scene. In a letter to Lohan and others associated with the filming of Georgia Rule that was later made public,James G. Robinson, CEO of the film’s production company, Morgan Creek Productions, wrote:

You and your representatives have told us that your various late arrivals and absences from the set have been the result of illness; today we were told it was ‘heat exhaustion’. We are well aware that your ongoing all night heavy partying is the real reason for your so-called ‘exhaustion’.

On January 18, 2007, Lohan checked herself in to the Wonderland Center rehabilitation facility in West Hollywood. Through her representative, she issued a statement saying, “I have made a proactive decision to take care of my personal health.”On May 26, 2007, Lohan lost control of her car and ran the vehicle up a curb. Police also found a “usable” amount of cocaine in her car and the police lab detected cocaine in her blood. After receiving treatment for minor injuries, Lohan was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence of alcohol.Two days later, Lohan entered the Promises Treatment Centers rehabilitation facility in Malibu, staying for 45 days.

On July 24, 2007 the police found Lohan by the parking lot of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, having a “heated debate” with her former assistant who was fired several hours earlier. After failing field sobriety tests Lohan was taken to a police station where her blood alcohol level was found to be above the legal limit. While conducting a search, the police found a small amount of cocaine in her pocket. Lohan was booked on a felony charge of possession of cocaine and misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license.

On August 23, 2007 Lohan pleaded guilty to cocaine use and driving under the influence and was sentenced to one day in jail and 10 days community service. She was also ordered to pay fines and complete an alcohol education program, and was placed on three years probation. “It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs,” Lohan said in a statement.

In 2008, several media outlets began commenting on Lohan and Samantha Ronson, who were regularly seen being affectionate in public. In July 2008, several newspapers, including The Times and Los Angeles Times, published opinion pieces describing their relationship as romantic. Lohan has yet to comment on the exact nature of their relationship, stating through her publicist that she “wants to keep her private life private.”[80] When pressed by a paparazzo to deny the rumors, Ronson responded, “Are you retarded?

Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975) is an American film actor and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She has been cited as one of the world’s most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported.[1] Jolie has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award.

Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin’ to Get Out, Jolie’s acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.[2] She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005).

Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention.[4] Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.
Early life and family

Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. Jolie is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father’s side, she is of Slovak and German descent,[5][6] and on her mother’s side she is French Canadian and is said to be part Iroquois,[7][8] although Voight once claimed Bertrand is “not seriously Iroquois,” and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife’s exotic background.

After her parents’ separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York.[10] As a child Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father.[11] When she was 11, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. She later recalled her time as a student at Beverly Hills High School (later Moreno High School), and her feeling of isolation among the children of some of the area’s more affluent families. Jolie’s mother survived on a more modest income, and Jolie often wore second-hand clothes. She was teased by other students who also targeted her for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces.[11] Her self-esteem was further diminished when her initial attempts at modeling proved unsuccessful. She started to cut herself; later commenting, “I collected knives and always had certain things around. For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.”[12] At 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director.[13] During this period, she wore black, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend.[11] Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother’s home.[10] She returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school, though in recent times she has referred to this period with the observation, “I am still at heart — and always will be — just a punk kid with tattoos”.

Jolie has been long estranged from her father, though a reconciliation was attempted, and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. In July 2002, Jolie filed a request to legally change her name to “Angelina Jolie”, dropping Voight as her surname; the name change was made official on September 12, 2002.[15] In August of the same year, Voight claimed that his daughter had “serious emotional problems” on Access Hollywood. Jolie later indicated that she no longer wished to pursue a relationship with her father, and said, “My father and I don’t speak. I don’t hold any anger toward him. I don’t believe that somebody’s family becomes their blood. Because my son’s adopted, and families are earned.” She stated that she did not want to publicize her reasons for her estrangement from her father, but because she had adopted her son, she did not think it was healthy for her to associate with Voight.

Early work, 1993–1997

Jolie began working as a fashion model at 14. She was signed with Finesse Model Management and modeled in both the United States and Europe, working mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. At that time she also appeared in numerous music videos, including those of Meat Loaf (”Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through”), Antonello Venditti (”Alta Marea”), Lenny Kravitz (”Stand by My Woman”), and The Lemonheads (”It’s About Time”). At the age of 16, Jolie returned to theatre, and played her first role as a German dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, as she noticed his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both “drama queens”.

Jolie appeared in five of her brother’s student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but her professional movie career began in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the low-budget film Cyborg 2, as Casella “Cash” Reese, a near-human robot, designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer’s headquarters and then self-detonate. Following several undistinguished projects she starred as Kate “Acid Burn” Libby in her first Hollywood picture, Hackers (1995), where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller. The New York Times wrote, “Kate (Angelina Jolie) stands out. That’s because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits intently at her keyboard in a see-through top. Despite her sullen posturing, which is all this role requires, Ms. Jolie has the sweetly cherubic looks of her father, Jon Voight.”[17] The movie failed to make a profit at the box-office, but developed a cult following after its video release. In 1995 she also appeared in Without Evidence.

She appeared as Gina Malacici in the 1996 comedy Love Is All There Is, a modern-day loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set among two rival Italian family restaurant owners in the Bronx, New York. In the road movie Mojave Moon she was a youngster, named Eleanor Rigby, who falls for Danny Aiello, while he takes a shine to her mother, Anne Archer. In 1996, she also played Margret “Legs” Sadovsky, one of five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond in the film Foxfire after they beat up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. The Los Angeles Times wrote about Jolie’s performance, “It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight’s knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst.”

In 1997, Jolie starred with David Duchovny in the thriller Playing God, a film portraying a surgeon who is stripped of his medical license and is lured deep into the criminal world where he meets Jolie’s character, Claire. The movie was not received well by critics and Roger Ebert noted that “Angelina Jolie finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a criminal’s] girlfriend, and maybe she is.”[20] She then appeared in the TV movie True Women, a historical romantic drama set in the American West, and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle. That year she also played a stripper who leaves mid-performance to wander New York City in the Rolling Stones music video for the song “Anybody Seen My Baby?”.

Breakthrough, 1997–2000

Jolie’s career prospects began to improve after her performance as Cornelia Wallace in the 1997 biopic George Wallace for which she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy. The film was highly praised by critics and, among other awards, received the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries/Motion Picture made for TV. She played the second wife of the segregationist Governor of Alabama who was shot and paralyzed while running for President. The film starred Gary Sinise and was directed by John Frankenheimer.

In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO’s Gia as supermodel Gia Carangi. The film depicted a world of sex, drugs and emotional drama, and chronicled the destruction of Carangi’s life and career as a result of her drug addiction, and her decline and death from AIDS. Vanessa Vance from Reel.com noted, “Angelina Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as the titular Gia, and it’s easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal — filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation — and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed.” For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award. In accordance with Lee Strasberg’s method acting Jolie reportedly preferred to stay in character in between scenes during many of her early films, and as a result had gained a reputation for being difficult to deal with. While shooting Gia, she told her then-husband Jonny Lee Miller that she wouldn’t be able to phone him. “I’d tell him: ‘I’m alone; I’m dying; I’m gay; I’m not going to see you for weeks.’”

Following Gia, Jolie moved to New York and stopped acting for a short period of time, because she felt that she had “nothing else to give”. She enrolled at New York University to study filmmaking and attended writing classes. She described it as “just good for me to collect myself” on Inside the Actors Studio.

Jolie returned to film as Gloria McNeary in the 1998 gangster movie Hell’s Kitchen, and later that year appeared in Playing by Heart, part of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe and Jon Stewart. The film received predominantly positive reviews and Jolie was praised in particular. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she’s willing to gamble.” Jolie won the Breakthrough Performance Award by the National Board of Review.

In 1999, she starred in Mike Newell’s comedy-drama Pushing Tin, co-starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Jolie played Thornton’s seductive wife. The film received a lukewarm reception from critics and Jolie’s character was particularly criticized. The Washington Post wrote, “Mary (Angelina Jolie), a completely ludicrous writer’s creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away from home.”[25] She then worked with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector, an adapted crime novel written by Jeffery Deaver. Jolie played Amelia Donaghy, a police officer haunted by her cop father’s suicide, who reluctantly helps Washington track down a serial killer. The movie grossed $151 million worldwide,but was a critical failure; the Detroit Free Press concluded, “Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast.”

Jolie next took the supporting role of the sociopathic Lisa Rowe in Girl, Interrupted (1999), a film that tells the story of mental patient Susanna Kaysen, and which was adapted from Kaysen’s original memoir Girl, Interrupted. While Winona Ryder played the main character in what was hoped to be a comeback for her, the film instead became the “welcome-to-Hollywood coronation” for Jolie.[27] Jolie won her third Golden Globe, her second Screen Actors Guild Award and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Variety noted, “Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna’s rehabilitation”[28] and Roger Ebert wrote about her performance:
“     Jolie is emerging as one of the great wild spirits of current movies, a loose cannon who somehow has deadly aim.   ”

In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer blockbuster, Gone In 60 Seconds, in which she played Sarah “Sway” Wayland, ex-girlfriend of car-thief Nicolas Cage. The role was small, and the Washington Post criticized that “all she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down, modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively around her teeth.”[30] She later explained that the film was a welcome relief after the heavy role of Lisa Rowe, and it became her highest grossing movie up until then, earning $237 million internationally.

International success, 2001–present

Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Jolie’s films to date had often not appealed to a wide audience, but Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider videogame, Jolie was required to master a British accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara Croft. She was generally praised for her physical performance, but the movie generated mostly negative reviews. Slant Magazine commented, “Angelina Jolie was born to play Lara Croft but [director] Simon West makes her journey into a game of Frogger.”[31] The movie was a huge international success nonetheless, earning $275 million worldwide,[3] and launched her global reputation as a female action star.

Jolie then starred alongside Antonio Banderas as the mail-order bride Julia Russell in Original Sin, a thriller based on the novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich. The film was a major critical failure, with The New York Times noting, “The story plunges more precipitously than Ms. Jolie’s neckline.”[32] In 2002, she played Lanie Kerrigan in Life or Something Like It, a film about an ambitious TV reporter who is told that she will die in a week. The film was poorly received by critics, though Jolie’s performance received positive reviews. CNN’s Paul Clinton wrote, “Jolie is excellent in her role. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the middle of the film, this Academy Award-winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life.”

Jolie at the premiere of Alexander in Cologne

Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life in 2003. The sequel, while not as lucrative as the original, earned $156 million at the international box-office.[3] Later that year Jolie starred in Beyond Borders, a film about aid workers in Africa. Although reflecting Jolie’s real-life interest in promoting humanitarian relief, the film was critically and financially unsuccessful. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Jolie, as she did in her Oscar-winning role in Girl, Interrupted, can bring electricity and believability to roles that have a reality she can understand. She can also, witness the Lara Croft films, do acknowledged cartoons. But the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her.”

In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan Hawke in the thriller Taking Lives, as Illeana Scott, an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The movie received mixed reviews and The Hollywood Reporter concluded, “Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour.”[35] She also provided the voice of Lola, an angelfish in the animated DreamWorks movie Shark Tale; the cast included Will Smith, Martin Scorsese, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black and Robert De Niro. Also in 2004, Jolie had a brief appearance in Kerry Conran’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a science fiction adventure film shot with actors entirely in front of a bluescreen. Jolie then played Olympias in Alexander (2004), Oliver Stone’s biopic about the life of Alexander the Great. The film failed domestically, with Stone attributing its poor reception to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander’s bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139 million outside the United States.

Jolie’s only movie of 2005, the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is also her biggest commercial success to date. The film, directed by Doug Liman, tells the story of a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. Jolie starred as Jane Smith alongside Brad Pitt. The film was well received and was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads. The Star Tribune noted, “While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars’ thermonuclear screen chemistry.”[37] The movie earned over $478 million worldwide, one of the biggest hits of 2005.

Jolie as Christine Collins on the set of Changeling

Jolie next appeared in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006), a film about the early history of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon. Jolie co-starred as Margaret Russell, Wilson’s neglected wife. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Jolie ages convincingly throughout, and is blithely unconcerned with how her brittle character is coming off in terms of audience sympathy.”

In 2007, Jolie made her directorial debut with the documentary A Place in Time, which captures the life in 27 locations around the globe during a single week and features fellow actors such as Jude Law, Hilary Swank, Colin Farrell and Jonny Lee Miller. The film is intended to be distributed through the National Education Association, mainly in high schools.[39] Jolie starred as Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart (2007), about the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. The picture is based on Mariane Pearl’s memoirs A Mighty Heart and had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter described Jolie’s performance as “well-measured and moving”, played “with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent.”[40] The film earned her a fourth Golden Globe and her third Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Jolie also played Grendel’s mother in Robert Zemeckis’ animated epic Beowulf (2007) which was created through the motion capture technique.

Jolie appeared in the action film Wanted, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Mark Millar, as well as the DreamWorks animated movie Kung Fu Panda, both released in mid 2008.[41] She was also cast as the lead in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming drama, Changeling, which wrapped principal photography in December 2007.

Humanitarian work

Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming Tomb Raider in poverty-stricken and widely mined Cambodia. She eventually turned to UNHCR for more information on international trouble spots. In the following months she agreed to visit different refugee camps around the world to learn more about the situation and the conditions in these areas. In February 2001, Jolie went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.[43] In the coming months she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and later met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan where she donated $1 million for Afghan refugees in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal.[44] She insisted on covering all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits.

Impressed by her interest and devotion in the subject, UNHCR named her a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva.[45] In a press conference Jolie explained her motives for joining the refugee agency:
“     We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don’t believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us.[43]     ”

During her first three years as Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie concentrated her efforts on field missions, visiting refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) all around the world. Asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, “Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon.”[46] In 2002, Jolie visited Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand and Colombian refugees in Ecuador to take a closer look at the “Western Hemisphere’s most severe humanitarian crisis”.[47] Jolie later went to various UNHCR facilities in Kosovo and paid a visit to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya with refugees mainly from Sudan. She also met with Angolan refugees while filming Beyond Borders in Namibia.

Jolie with Colin Powell in Washington, D.C., June 2004

In 2003, Jolie embarked on a six-day mission to Tanzania where she traveled to western border camps, hosting Congolese refugees and she paid a week-long visit to Sri Lanka. She later concluded a four-day mission to Russia as she traveled to North Caucasus. Concurrently with the release of her movie Beyond Borders in October 2003 she published Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001-2002). During a private stay in Jordan in December 2003 she asked to visit Iraqi refugees in Jordan’s remote eastern desert and later that month she went to Egypt to meet Sudanese refugees.

On her first U.N. trip within the United States, Jolie went to Arizona in 2004, visiting detained asylum seekers at three facilities and the Southwest Key Program, a facility for unaccompanied children in Phoenix. With the humanitarian situation in Sudan worsening, she flew to Chad in June 2004, paying a visit to border sites and camps for refugees who had fled fighting in western Sudan’s Darfur region. Four months later she returned to the region, this time going directly into West Darfur. Also in 2004, Jolie met with Afghan refugees in Thailand and on a private stay to Lebanon during the Christmas holidays, she visited UNHCR’s regional office in Beirut, as well as some young refugees and cancer patients in the Lebanese capital.

In 2005, Jolie visited Pakistani camps containing Afghani refugees, and she also met with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz; she returned to Pakistan with Brad Pitt during the Thanksgiving weekend in November to see the impact of the October 8 Kashmir earthquake. In 2006, Jolie and Pitt flew to Haiti and visited a school supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean, and while filming A Mighty Heart in India, Jolie met with Afghan and Burmese refugees in New Delhi. She spent Christmas Day 2006 with Colombian refugees in San José, Costa Rica where she handed out presents. In 2007, Jolie returned to Chad for a two-day mission to assess the deteriorating security situation for refugees from Darfur; Jolie and Pitt subsequently donated $1 million to three relief organizations in Chad and Darfur.[48] Jolie also made her first visit to Syria and Iraq, where she met with Iraqi refugees as well as multi-national forces and U.S. troops.

Jolie and Condoleezza Rice at World Refugee Day 2005

With increasing experience, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on a political level. She regularly attends World Refugee Day in Washington, D.C., and she was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005 and 2006. Jolie also began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital, where she met with members of Congress at least 20 times from 2003.[45] She explained in Forbes:
“     As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that’s the way to move the ball.

In 2005, Jolie took part at a National Press Club luncheon, where she announced the founding of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal-aid to asylum-seeking children with no legal representation which Jolie personally funded with a donation of $500,000 for its first two years.[49] Jolie also pushed for several bills to aid refugees and vulnerable children in the Third World.[45] In addition to her political involvement, Jolie began using her public profile to promote humanitarian causes through the mass media. She filmed an MTV special, The Diary Of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, portraying her and noted economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on a trip to a remote group of villages in Western Kenya. There, Sachs’s United Nations Millennium Project team is working with locals to end poverty, hunger and disease. In 2006, Jolie announced the founding of the Jolie/Pitt Foundation which made initial donations to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders of $1 million each.[50] Jolie also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, founded at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006, which helps fund education programs for children affected by conflict.

Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2003, she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA.[51] Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country on August 12, 2005; she has pledged $5 million to set up a wildlife sanctuary in the north-western province of Battambang and owns property there.[52] In 2007, Jolie became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,and she received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee.

Relationships

On March 28, 1996, Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her co-star in the film Hackers. She attended her wedding in black leather pants and a white shirt, upon which she had written the groom’s name in her blood.[41] Jolie and Miller separated the following year and subsequently divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms and Jolie later explained, “It comes down to timing. I think he’s the greatest husband a girl could ask for. I’ll always love him, we were simply too young.”

She then married American actor Billy Bob Thornton, whom she had met on the set of Pushing Tin, on May 5, 2000. As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love (most famously wearing one another’s blood in vials around their necks), their relationship became a favorite topic of the entertainment media.[41] Jolie and Thornton divorced on May 27, 2003. Asked in Vogue about the sudden dissolution of their marriage, Jolie stated, “It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it’s scary but… I think it can happen when you get involved and you don’t know yourself yet.”

Jolie and Brad Pitt at the Deauville American Film Festival in 2007

Jolie has said in interviews that she is bisexual and has long acknowledged that she had a sexual relationship with her Foxfire co-star Jenny Shimizu, “I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her.”[56] In 2003, asked if she was bisexual, Jolie responded, “Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it’s okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!”
In early 2005, Jolie was involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal when she was accused of being the “other woman” in the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The allegation was that she and Pitt had started a sexual affair during filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith; however, she has denied this in several interviews. In an interview in 2005, she explained, “To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife.”

While Jolie and Pitt never publicly commented on the nature of their relationship, speculations continued throughout 2005. The first intimate paparazzi photos emerged in April, one month after Aniston had filed for divorce; they showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer Jolie and Pitt were seen together with increasing frequency and most of the entertainment media considered them a couple, dubbing them “Brangelina”. On January 11, 2006 Jolie confirmed to People that she was pregnant with Pitt’s child and thereby confirmed their relationship for the first time in public.
Children

On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt (originally Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie).[15] He was born on August 5, 2001 as Rath Vibol in Cambodia, and he initially lived in a local orphanage in Battambang. Jolie decided to apply for adoption after she had visited Cambodia twice, while filming Tomb Raider and on a UNHCR field trip in 2001. After her divorce from her second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie received sole custody of Maddox. Like Jolie’s other children, Maddox has gained considerable celebrity and appears regularly in the tabloid media.

Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl from Ethiopia, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt (originally Zahara Marley Jolie), on July 6, 2005. Zahara was born on January 8, 2005; her original name has been reported as either Tena Adam[59] or Yemsrach.[60] Jolie adopted her from Wide Horizons For Children orphanage in Addis Ababa. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara was hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition. In 2007, media outlets reported Zahara’s biological mother, Mentewabe Dawit, was still alive and wanted her daughter back, but she later denied these reports, saying she thought Zahara was “very fortunate” to be adopted by Jolie.[60]

Brad Pitt was reportedly present when Jolie signed the adoption papers and collected her daughter;[41] later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt Zahara together.[61] In December 2005 it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie’s two children, and on January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request. The children’s legal surnames were formally changed to “Jolie-Pitt”.

Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, in Swakopmund, Namibia, by a scheduled caesarean section, on May 27, 2006. Pitt confirmed that their newly-born daughter will have a Namibian passport,[63] and Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these extremely valuable snapshots. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million.[64] All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Jolie and Pitt. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it was the first infant re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds.

In March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a three-year-old boy from Vietnam, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt (originally Pax Thien Jolie),[66] who was born on November 29, 2003 and abandoned at birth at a local hospital, where he was initially named Pham Quang Sang.[67] Jolie adopted the boy from the Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City.[68] She revealed that his first name, Pax, was suggested by her mother before her death.[69]

Following months of tabloid speculation, Jolie confirmed she was expecting twins at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. She gave birth to a boy, Knox Léon Jolie-Pitt, and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, by caesarean section at the Lenval hospital in Nice, France, on July 12, 2008.[70] The rights for the first images of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for $14 million - the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The money went to the Jolie/Pitt Foundation.

Jolie in the media

Jolie appeared in the media from an early age due to her famous father Jon Voight. At seven she had a small part in Lookin’ to Get Out, a movie co-written by and starring her father, and in 1986 and 1988 she attended the Academy Awards as a teenager with him. However, when she started her acting career, Jolie decided not to use “Voight” as a stage name, because she wished to establish her own identity as an actress.[41] Jolie was never shy about controversy and integrated her teenage “wild girl” image into her public persona in the first years of her career. During her acceptance speech at the 2000 Academy Awards, Jolie declared, “I’m so in love with my brother right now”, which, combined with her affectionate behavior towards him that night, sparked speculation in the tabloid media of an incestuous relationship with her brother James Haven. She has denied those rumors vehemently, and Jolie and Haven later explained in interviews that after their parents’ divorce they relied on one another and because of that they hold on to each other as a means of emotional support.

Jolie is noted as “the one A-list celebrity without a publicist”,[57] and she quickly became a tabloid’s favorite, since she presented herself as very outspoken in interviews, discussing her love life and her interest in BDSM openly,[8] and once claiming to be “most likely to sleep with a female fan”.[57] As one of her most distinctive physical features, Jolie’s lips have attracted notable media attention and she has been described as “the current gold standard of beauty in the West” among women seeking cosmetic surgery.[72] She also created headlines with her much publicized marriage to Billy Bob Thornton and her subsequent change into an advocate for global humanitarian problems. As she took on the role of UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador she started to use her celebrity to highlight humanitarian causes worldwide. Jolie has been taking flying lessons since 2004 and she has a private pilot license (with an instrument rating) and owns a Cirrus SR22 airplane.[73] The media speculated that Jolie is a Buddhist, but she said that she teaches Buddhism to her son Maddox because she considers it part of his culture. Jolie has not stated definitively whether or not she believes in God. When asked in 2000 if there was a God, she said, “For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn’t need to be a God for me.”[74]

Starting in 2005, her relationship with Brad Pitt became one of the most reported celebrity stories worldwide. After Jolie confirmed her pregnancy in early 2006, the unprecedented media hype surrounding them “reached the point of insanity” as Reuters described it in their story “The Brangelina fever”.[4] Trying to avoid the media attention, the couple went to Namibia for the birth of Shiloh, “the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ”, as it had been described.[75] Two years later, Jolie’s second pregnancy again fueled a media frenzy. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, dozens of reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade to report on the birth.

Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31 % of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them, by 2006 she was familiar to 81 % of Americans.[45] In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide.[77] Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2006[78] and 2008.[79] She was described as the world’s most beautiful woman in the 2006 “100 Most Beautiful” issue of People.[80] On Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list, Jolie was ranked at No. 35 in 2006,[81] No. 14 in 2007,[82] and she became the highest listed actor at No. 3 in 2008.[83] In February 2007, she was voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols.
Tattoos

Jolie’s inventory of tattoos has become the subject of much media attention and has often been addressed by interviewers. Jolie stated that, while she is not opposed to film nudity, the large number of tattoos on her body has forced filmmakers to become more creative when planning nude or love scenes.[84] Make-up has been used to cover up the tattoos in many of her productions. Jolie currently has 13 known tattoos, among them the Tennessee Williams quote “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages”, which she got together with her mother, the Arabic language phrase “العزيمة” (strength of will), the Latin proverb “quod me nutrit me destruit” (what nourishes me destroys me),[85] and a Yantra prayer written in the ancient Khmer and Pali scripts for her son Maddox.[86] She also has four sets of geographical coordinates on her upper left arm indicating the birthplaces of her children.[87] Over time she covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including “Billy Bob”, the name of her former husband Billy Bob Thornton, a Chinese character for death (死), and a window on her lower back; she explained that she removed the window, because, while she used to spend all of her time looking out through windows wishing to be outside, she now lives there all of the time.