Most Hollywood stars make their red carpet debuts in their late teens or early 20s, usually without much fanfare and at relatively small-scale events. Not so for Angelina Jolie, who, at the tender age of 10, arrived at the 1986 Academy Awards in a froth of Madonna-esque white lace and strings of pearls. “Are you nervous for your dad tonight?” she’s asked by a red carpet reporter, nodding to her father, Jon Voight, the Oscar-winning star of Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home, who that year was in the running for the best-actor prize for Runaway Train. “Sort of,” she replies tentatively, giggling and revealing an adorable gap in her teeth.
Remarkably, it wasn’t even her first public appearance: the Los Angeles-born industry fixture, now 49, has been in the public eye since birth, initially alongside her family, and then in her own right. After appearing on the big screen for the first time as a precocious seven-year-old, opposite Voight in Hal Ashby’s 1982 comedy Lookin’ to Get Out, she was a captivating presence in a string of music videos; won a part in Hackers with Jonny Lee Miller, whom Jolie later married, aged 20; secured a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for the ’50s-set George Wallace; and then broke out in a big way with 1998’s Gia. Cue yet another Golden Globe, a SAG Award, and a scene-stealing supporting role in Girl, Interrupted, which would bring her an Oscar and establish her as a bonafide A-lister.
