Marcheline Bertrand

Actress Angelina Jolie (L) waves to fans with actor Brad Pitt during 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' Japan Premiere at Roppongi Hills on January 29, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. The film will open in Japan on Feburary 7. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Brad Pitt;Angelina Jolie (Getty Images)more pics »Marcheline Bertrand 
 
French superstar?  Hardly.  Marcheline Bertrand was born in Chicago on May 9, 1950.  Her birth name?  Marcia Lynne.  Tres Gallic, indeed.  

Although the mother of the Hottest Woman in the World is often rumored to be a French actress, Marcia Lynne Bertrand was born a typical American girl, to working-class French-Canadian parents.   After studying acting at New York's Lee Strasberg Institute, she changed her name to the more exotic Marcheline and began a career as an actress in Hollywood.  

Bertrand's real claim to fame came with her marriage to the star of Easy Rider, when she wed American actor Jon Voight on December 12, 1971. They went on to have two children together; son James Haven Voight was born in 1973, and daughter Angelina Jolie Voight was born in 1975.

In 1978, Bertrand and Voight were divorced, and in the 1980's, she starred in two forgettable films, Lookin' to Get Out (1982), and The Man Who Loved Women (1983).   Lookin' to Get Out also starred Voight and their daughter Angelina Jolie.  Long after abandoning her career as an actress, Bertrand became a producer, and along with Jolie, made the film Trudell in 2005, about the Native American activist John Trudell and his political views, poems, and travels.    

Angelina Jolie eventually followed in her mother's footsteps, studying at the Strasberg Institute herself, and achieving the kind of superstardom that her mother never could.  In television and magazine interviews, Jolie has credited her mother, not her more-famous father, with inspiring her to act.  Bertrand also instilled in her daughter a love of philanthropy and helping the less fortunate, which Jolie exemplifies as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.  

Bertrand died on January 1, 2007, at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, after a 7 1/2 year battle with ovarian cancer.  She lived to see her daughter adopt two children, as well as give birth to a third child.  In early 2007, Jolie adopted a fourth child, a boy from Vietnam, and named him Pax, a name which Bertrand had helped pick out before her death.  Jolie's new baby girl, Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, is also named after the late Bertrand. 

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