Angelina Jolie's transformation from druggie goth to earth mother makes her a compelling subject, says author Andrew Morton.UK AUTHOR Andrew Morton is toey about criticisms of his biography of Angelina Jolie.
He spent 18 months working on Angelina: An Unauthorised Biography and critics in the US and UK say it lacks originality and credibility.
"I've got solid, substantial sources," he says, sounding exasperated on the phone from New York.
"I have people like her babysitter who was a good friend of her mother, like the man who lived with her mother for 11 years (Bill Day) and helped bring her up -- who she called Daddy-O -- her drug dealer, a fellow drug taker, actors and directors.
"All these people have helped to compile a vivid and different portrait of Angelina to the one that she's articulated herself."
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Morton has written biographies on Tom Cruise, Madonna and Monica Lewinsky, but it was Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words that made him a household name in 1998.
Morton has found Jolie equally intriguing.
"I'm proud of this book, obviously the Diana book stands proud as a unique book because it was an authorised biography that changed the way people see the monarchy," Morton says.
"This book will change the way people see Angelina and the way she views herself."
He was shocked to discover that her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, banished Jolie as a nine-month-old to a separate apartment in their Los Angeles home and left her in the care of staff for a year because she reminded her of estranged husband Jon Voight.
Morton spoke to psychiatrists about the impact of this kind of experience.
"That imprinting experience shaped and formed her reactions to the world," he says.
"She couldn't connect with anybody else. She felt revolted by herself and that manifested in eating disorders, cutting, drug taking and in the morbid sense, her trying to commit suicide."
Again, Morton rebukes journalists who have criticised him for including opinions of psychologists who have never met or treated Jolie.
"I think that's utter bonkers," he says.
"You are not going to get a psychologist who has treated Angelina because if you treat somebody you don't talk about it.
"It's about explaining, generally, what these kinds of symptoms tell you about your life."
Morton traces Jolie's battle with heroin, cocaine and anorexia during her teens and early 20s. He believes she hasn't overcome those demons, so much as learnt to live with them.
"Let me give you a tip. If she is wearing black she feels OK about her body shape, if she's not, she's not," he says.
Morton believes Jolie has made men compromise themselves and cites Billy Bob Thornton leaving Laura Dern and Mike Jagger pursuing her while Jerry Hall was pregnant as examples. "She has seen instinctively that her father let her down by abandoning the family, and psychologically the men in her life have done the same thing."
He thinks her union with Brad Pitt has survived because he is subtly controlling as well.
"You never know who is going to be wearing the pants in that relationship."
He says Jolie has replicated her childhood for her six children, with her acting commitments forcing her to leave them in the care of nannies for extensive periods.
Though Morton is happy to dig into other people's lives, he is guarded about his own.
He lived in the US after a few highly publicised affairs and his divorce from his wife of 29 years. But now he is back living in London, near his two daughters and his beloved two-year-old grandson.
"I felt very sorry for Jon Voight that he has fallen out with Angelina for so long, that he has missed out on all those years of the joy of being a grandfather," Morton says.
Morton is working on a biography with former CBS broadcaster and Access Hollywood co-host Pat O'Brien. He is not sure who his next target will be.
"I'm trying to get away from the 24/7 tabloid world. I need a change from actors or I'll be typecast," he says.
Angelina: An Unauthorised Biography by Andrew Morton, HarperCollins, rrp $35
MORTON DIGS UP THE DIRT ON ANGELINA
* Jolie's mother Marcheline "Marche" Bertrand (right) was an aspiring actor in love with two men: Jon Voight and his friend Al Pacino. Her mother encouraged her to marry Voight, a more successful actor at the time -- and Pacino remained the unrequited love of her life.
* Born on June 4, 1975, Angelina was named after Marche's Quebec-born grandmother, Marie-Louisa Angelina, and a friend Angelina Stogel. Marche gave her the middle name of Jolie so she could drop her surname when she went into show business.
* At kindergarten Jolie formed a group called the Kissy Girls, who went around kissing the boys and giving them love bites.
* Marche let 14-year-old Jolie and her boyfriend Anton live together at her home because it was better than them sneaking off to have sex.
* Jolie's first nude scene in a film was at the age of 17, with Elias Koteas in Cyborg 2.
* When Jolie's attempts to break into Hollywood were thwarted, her mother consulted a psychic, runes and astrology charts. In the end she told people Jolie was Jon Voight's daughter and doors began to open.
* A sex scene between David Duchovny and Jolie in Playing God (right) was axed because it was too erotic.
* Marche adored Mick Jagger and when he became obsessed with Jolie, she encouraged him to pursue her daughter in the hope they would marry one day.
* Angelina hired a hit man to kill her. The would-be killer gave her a month-long cooling-off period. She didn't pursue the plan after being nominated for a Golden Globe Award for George Wallace.
* At the start of their intense relationship, Billy Bob Thornton locked himself away in his Nashville recording studio, and Jolie checked herself into a psychiatric institute because she feared losing him. They married soon after.
* Friends believe Johnny Depp is the only person who could bust up her union with Brad Pitt, but the anticipated affair never eventuated on the set of The Tourist last year.
* Jolie defers to her adopted son Maddox. When he started calling Brad Pitt "Dad", she stated: "That was probably the most defining moment, when he decided that we would all be a family."
* Jolie and Pitt firmly control their publicity machine, with Jolie turning up in a developing country or talking about her UN Goodwill Ambassador role every time there's a whiff of bad publicity. Their first pictures of daughter Shiloh raised $11 million for the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
* Jolie likes to leave her children with Pitt and a platoon of nannies and stay in a hotel when she is working on a film.
* Jon Voight was not invited to the twins Knox and Vivienne's first birthday on July 12, 2009. But there were signs she might be willing to forgive her father for his perceived wrongs when she invited him to join her family in Venice in February.
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