'What the hell is wrong with Angelina Jolie?'

           SHOCK TREATMENT- An afternoon with Angleina Jolly: cars, knives,
           sex with woman, adopting kids. Nice of her to tone things down for
           Suzan Colon.

           "I am so sorry I'm late."

           I've only been occupying the slightly filmy table at Johnie's-a L.A. diner
           so low-rent they don't even include the second n in the name-for about
           10 minutes. This is where I'm to meet Jolly, the 24-year-old actress
           whose considerable talent is frequently overshadowed by both her
           beauty and her eccentricities. But that just makes her more alluring,
           right?

           I turn around to tell her not to worry about being late, and for a long
           couple of seconds, nothing comes out of my mouth; now I know what
           they mean by stunned silence. I was not prepared for this woman.

           ANGELINA, THE ACTRESS

           For some of you, your first experience with Jolly might have been the
           movie Lookin' To Get Out, which she did when she was 7. More likely it
           was The Bone Collector, Angelina's first starring role in a big movie. But
           most people first saw Angelina in HBO's Gia, based on the messed up
           life of supermodel Gia Carangi.

           Acting is the family business. Angelina's father is Jon Voight. Her
           favorite movie of his is Anaconda, but people generally prefer him in the
           classic Midnight Cowboy. Angelina's mom, Marcheline Bertrand, is also
           an actor, but less well known the Jon.

           "I've gone to things where my father's with me and my mother and
           brother get pushed out of the way," Angelina says. "My father has
           made a choice to speak about me every time he dose an interview. I've
           made a choice to not have it be about that. I got in a big fight with this
           interviewer. I sad, 'I don't want to talk about him.' He said, 'Because you
           don't like talking about him?' And I said, 'Okay, I'll talk about him, but
           answer this-how's you relationship with you father? Do you feel like he
           loved you?' It's strange, isn't it, for somebody to just come up to you
           and ask that. But if I didn't mention my mom, nobody would care."

           In light of all that, it's important to point out that it was Angelina's
           mother who encouraged her to act. We would've loved to have gotten
           her take on her career, but Marcheline doesn't do interviews. Angelina
           used her middle name to avoid accusations of getting by on her father's
           legacy. (Actually, their parents gave Angelina and her brother
           interesting middle names-Jolly and Haven-for just that
           purpose.)Angelina studied acting at some pretty prestigious places,
           including New York University, where she enrolled after her movie
           career was in full swing, not the other way around.

           Whether she's in minor movies like Foxfire, or outright disasters like
           Playing God, Angelina is invariably the one bright spot mentioned.
           Occasionally competing with her on-screen successes are the things
           she dose offscreen. She's won two Golden Globes, on for Gia and
           another for George Wallace. At one of the ceremonies, she celebrated
           by drinking tequila and jumping into the hotel pool in her fabulous
           dress. Can you blame her?

           THE WILD WOMAN

           These are things you're most likely to read about Angelina: She collects
           knives and has alluded to using them in-or as-foreplay (I have no idea).
           When she married her Hackers costar Jonny Lee Miller, her wedding
           outfit included a white T-shirt with his name written in blood. She has
           said she's done every drug imaginable. She is not shy about nude
           scenes or kissing woman. She's got quit a few tattoos, including one
           going across her stomach that reads Quod me nutrit me destruit-Lating
           for "what nourished me destroys me."

           Which brings us to today, to Jonnie's restaurant, where hissing noises
           are coming not from the grill but from the cooks, where truck drivers are
           ramming cheeseburgers for lunch, and everything kind of stops when
           Angelina walks in.

           Of course, you're expecting me to say that, because she's so gorgeous,
           which is what I was expecting, too.

           But when I turn around to tell her not to worry about being late, I'm
           speechless. Angelina's hair is white blond and her face is competing
           with it in terms of paleness. Makeup tries to cover her troubled skin
           (alas, it works about as well for her as it dose for me). She's taller than
           most actresses, around 5 feet 7 inches, which only accentuates her
           narrowness; she's seeming in black leather pants and her black T-shirt
           hangs on her. Her eyes seem sleepy, but her gaze is direct. She's
           beautiful, but in a rough, dangerous way. She looks like a tall, blond
           razor blade.

           Angelina is already talking before she sits down, about Gone in 60
           Seconds, where she plays a car thief along side Nicolas Cage, Robet
           Duball and Giovanni Ribsi. She pauses just long enough to give a huge
           order to our waitress: steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn on the
           side and a salad. She's not a fast talker, but a steady one, kind of a
           rambler. So when her salad comes, I tell her to feel free to ear, she
           doesn't have to talk the whole time. "Oh, this is, like, so not food to me,"
           she says. Granted, a wilted salad doesn't make the best breakfast. "oh,
           nooo," she says, "this isn't the first thing today. I've been eating. I'm
           trying to put some weight on. That's why this [the offending salad] feels
           like a waste of time.

           This has been a really tough time in my life," she says, "so, getting
           nervous, I don't eat much, even though I remind myself. And just, like,
           five pounds will look so different," she continues. "I'm hoping to get on
           a program soon. When I was in the hospital with a friend who had an IV
           in her arm, I was like, maybe if you stick that in me, just actually inject
           pure protein, you know/ I would love you have my figure back. I always
           felt like I didn't have one." That's strange, considering the amount of
           Web Sites devoted to Angelina's nude film appearances alone. But I
           guess people's views of themselves are often different from the reality.

           THE EXTREMIST

           Angelina's perception of herself is that she's trying to be expressive.
           Other people think she's a little destructive. "I wanted to go to a
           premiere with the Hell's Angels," she says, now stabbing at her gnarly
           looking steak, "But the press said, 'Oh, you can't do that.' People have
           said to me, 'You're too outspoken. Why are you talking about being
           gay?' and I'm like, 'I'm not gay, I played a gay character, Gia. It's great
           when you discover that you love other woman.'"

           (I'm glad she brought this up. In our entertainment poll, many of the
           people who nominated her for Female Actor Who Makes Your Knees
           Weak-and by that I mean girl people-wrote things like "If I was ever to
           switch teams, I'd want to play her every position." And the reason I'm
           glad she brought this up is because I didn't know how to say, "You
           know, you really bring out the latent lesbian in out readers!"

           "They're right to think that about me, because I'm the person most likely
           to sleep with my female fans," Angelina smiles, her eyes narrowing
           coyly. "I genuinely love other woman. And I think they know that.")

           Back to Angelina's free-wheeling expression: "I'm trying to shake things
           up," she says, "I don't want to do something I've done before. I want to
           wear wings and colored contacts and tattoos in movies so I look
           different. I want to have an accent, cause I think it's important."

           If Angelina is going to the trouble of wondering what color her
           character's eyes should be, imagine the research she's doing on their
           personalities. She gets so into it, that when she talks about her
           characters, she bounces back and forth between "she" and "I." This
           makes for great acting, but not for great living-especially if the person
           you're playing is a pot of trouble, like Gia, or Lisa.

           "I'm like the bad gut, but I really do feel that she's right," she says of her
           character. "Lisa's just looking for people to be fucking straight with her.
           She didn't hold anything back. If she wanted to spit on somebody, she
           spit on somebody. She had no inhibitions and no feelings."

           In a strange parallel with Lisa, Angelina confides, "I've gotten in a lot of
           fights with people because I need to get a reaction."

           THE WOMAN WE CAN'T FIGURE OUT

           Forty-five minutes and four bites of steak later, we head across the
           street to the Petersen Automotive Museum. A group of young girls
           recognize her and ask for autographs. For a person in her early 20's,
           Angelina has none of the girlishness associated with that age. She
           seems a bit serious, like she's seen a lot and not liked much of it. And
           yet she shows no attitude, as she signs her autograph-and it takes a
           while, because she wants to write something personal and different for
           each one of the girls: Call me the next time you want to skip science
           class-Angelina Jolie.

           Angelina has a jones for kids, as in wanting one. She seems to be
           leaning toward adoption rather than giving birth because there are so
           many kids out there. There may also be a grain of doubt about the
           dependability of relationships. He marriage to Jonny lasted three years.
           She's most recently been with Timothy Hutton, her costar from Playing
           God, and the end of that relationship found her wondering what the
           definition of love it. But, surprisingly, not in a negative way.

           "It should be a combination of thinking, 'I love you but I just want to rip
           that apart and eat you,'" she says. "I just haven't found that person to
           break through with. But I've just gotten signs. Certainly my husband
           and I were… it was great, kind of an honest experiment. Maybe some
           people don't find another person, you know?"

           "I don't need to be with a person, but I do want to start a family. I mean,
           selfishly, it would make my life so much fuller, worth living. I'll have to
           have inspections," she says of the adoption possibility. "People have
           said to me, 'You do the cover of Rolling Stone in a certain outfit [it was
           lingerie] and you talk about knives and being gay, the judge is going to
           see that. "I'm the dark horse, so it's like suddenly… But…" She slows
           down and frowns. The idea that there may be a price for being free, for
           being herself, seems to be tainting Angelina's thoughts for the first time.

           The auto museum is a large, dark place filled with classic cars, ancient
           gas pumps and a very big gift shop. It's in here that Angelina really
           comes alive. She's so excited by the racing flags, the tiny model cars, the
           car books. She's till in her latest character's mind, still thinking "car
           thief." Poring over the merchandise, she buts two key chains, two pairs
           of fuzzy dice, two black and white racing flags.

           "Here," she says, thrusting one of the shopping bags at me. "We'll have
           the same stuff. Now we're partners."

           Once again, I don't know what to say.

           THE ANSWERS

           Okay, you've seen the pictures, you've read the story, and now you're
           probably jumping to all sorts of conclusions about what could possibly
           going on with Angelina. Because that's what was going on at the Jane
           offices. Addiction? Anorexia? Insomnia? It's just like a bunch of
           journalists to discuss every dire situation possible before coming up
           with a simple solution: Ask her.

           "Oh, God…it's-everything has become overwhelming," she beings, over
           the phone two weeks later. "I did two heavy films-Bone Collector and
           Girl, Interrupted-back to back, and I was emotionally wiped out. I though
           I was going to take some time off, but I got the 60 second script, and it
           looked fun. During filming, my divorce became final, so that was another
           thing.

           "Also, a close friend of mine got very sick. I had stress from these
           things, obviously, and I didn't look well, my face broke out, I showed up
           on the set, and they said 'You go home.' Somehow it made a bunch of
           people very upset with me because they didn't know whatever was
           going on. I didn't feel like explaining somebody's private business, but
           you suddenly thing, 'God, here I am looking really skinny, and I can't
           eat…' I can now, I'm fine, I just went through an emotional time. But
           when you do that in this business, you realize the ugliness of what the
           worst in their eyes would be, that [people are] thinking that you're sick.
           If in the future I ever was, this is how little people would help me.

           "And it's not this film-these people ended up being great to me. But it
           just made me yearn for a normal life.

           It's strange to think that, even though Angelina will talk about almost
           anything, there are still rumors to be circulated. "This person asked me
           about cutting myself when they saw a scar," she says. "I'm very open,
           but because of that, people think that they know everything about me,
           and actually they don't know anything. I say things that other people
           might go through. That's what artists should do-throw things out there
           and not be perfect and not have answers for anything and see if people
           understand.

           "But this person made the cutting sound interesting, like it was
           something I do now. [For the record, she did, but doesn't now, and
           doesn't endorse it] And then I met somebody who said they'd seem
           movies of mine and then showed me where they had cut themselves. I
           had to explain, first off, not to do that. But I make me really fucking
           angry at the people who represent me in a way that would get that
           person to do that and how me. I don't understand why people would
           want to use something so damaging. It's like, let's make me look 'cool'
           and worry a lot of people in my family."

           I feel guilty for saying that Angelina looked to pale and thing, just as I
           would feel stupid if I'd said she looked perfect. Ultimately, though, she
           doesn't really care what ends up in this article.

           "You just accept that you're going to hear rumors about yourself," she
           sings. "But I know that truth, and my people who love me know the
           truth. That's all that really matters.