A Home-Wrecking Humanitarian, Footnote Free
By Janet Maslin
Published: July 25, 2010, New York Times

ANGELINA
An Unauthorized Biography
By Andrew Morton
Illustrated. 328 pages. St. Martin’s Press. $26.99.
   
Angelina Jolie has accrued an Oscar, several Golden Globes, a Global Humanitarian Action Award, a Freedom Award and a seat on the Council on Foreign Relations. She has managed all this while building herself into one of the few viable female Hollywood stars who can carry a film single-handedly and squelching all competition for the title of World’s Yummiest Mummy.

Those distinctions are nice, but now comes the big one: Ms. Jolie has qualified as a biographical subject for Andrew Morton in his new book, “Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography,” set to be released on Aug. 3. And Mr. Morton does not usually write his page-turners about garden-variety celebrities. (Ignore his “Posh and Becks.” This book’s “also by Andrew Morton” list has.) He picks people — Diana, Princess of Wales; Tom Cruise; Madonna; Monica Lewinsky — who not only became uber-famous but also found ways to rock the world.

What exactly qualifies Ms. Jolie to be in this company? Here’s the short version: Hollywood lineage, drop-dead gorgeous, Goth phase, tattoos, blood in vials, Billy Bob, heroin, S&M, bisexuality, big wet kiss for brother, magical makeover, six kids, genius for image control. And home wrecker. That too.

Since Ms. Jolie is also something of a mystery, she would have presented ordinary biographers with a formidable challenge. But Mr. Morton is not easily deterred. And he has a helpful mantra for digging into the lives of others: Sources are for amateurs. No footnotes or chapter notes sully the simplicity of his research.

Very few of those who talked to him were willing to go on the record. And the people most eager to tell him about Ms. Jolie are people who don’t know her, so that the book is shrink-wrapped in glib insights from dubious psychiatric talents. That means that “a psychologist who has met with Jennifer socially” is allowed to opine freely on the all-important Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston breakup, the best-known marital meltdown in which Ms. Jolie has been involved yet claimed to have played no role whatsoever. “They wouldn’t find her fingerprints at the scene of this marital crime,” Mr. Morton writes.
The full review at NYT.