From Tomb Raider to landmine crusader

The 27-year-old Oscar winning actress visited a demining centre in Cheshire at the weekend to help raise awareness about the plight of millions of children and adults around the world affected by landmines – a cause pioneered by the late Diana, Princess of Wales which has become very close to her heart since visiting Cambodia and adopting her one-year-old son, Maddox.

She first encountered the effects of landmines when filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia three years ago and, in an action reminiscent of her on-screen character, decided she could help rid the world of this particular evil.

“Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola are some of the most heavily bombed countries in the world and we were just told ‘You can’t go there, you can’t go there, you stay on this path because there are landmines’ and I just didn’t understand what that was. So I learnt about the situation in Cambodia and the fact that there’s a landmine in the ground for every man, woman and child in that country,” she explains.

“It’s so unnecessary and it does kill. They shouldn’t be used and they have to be removed.”

Jolie adopted Maddox in March this year from a Cambodian orphanage and US immigration authorities allowed her to bring him to America in June. She believes that he may have lost his parents as a result of landmines.

“We don’t actually know how he lost his parents. There’s a very good chance it was landmines but we’re not sure. But a lot of the children there are orphaned by landmines and there’s a possibility that Madd was," she said.

Jolie’s maternal instinct and devotion to her child is obvious – she mentions him in almost every sentence – and her new-found empathy with other parents has increased her desire, not only to protect her own son but to protect all children from this danger.

She is currently building a house in Cambodia as a home for Maddox and will live there with him for part of each year. She describes how the land around the house had to be cleared of mines and her fear that her son will be injured: “I’m terrified that he’s going to go for a walk and could step on something so I’m very aware of what the parents there and anybody living in a country with landmines must feel.”

She adds: “The last time I was in Cambodia I found out that seven new children were orphaned because their parents and a friend were taking an ox cart to the hospital and they went over an anti-tank mine. All seven children were orphaned in a moment.”

Jolie’s new persona as besotted single mother and charity worker – as well as being patron of the Adopt A Minefield charity, she works with Cambodian Vision and Development (CVD) and is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – is far removed from the eccentric who, among other exploits, reportedly wore a phial of her now estranged husband, actor, director and musician Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck.

But she is passionate and committed when she talks about the landmine victims she has met through her work with CVD: “They’re wonderful people, strong, funny, brilliant people. They can’t be dependent on outsiders so they have to learn how to farm, they have to take care of their children.

“I actually watched them build a house together despite their disabilities which was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen. They had the guys who could see but had one arm leading the guys who had two arms but couldn’t see at all and the guys with no legs were filing the wood on the floor and it was amazing. They’re smiling and so grateful to have just the little that they have so it certainly taught me a lot but nobody should be in that situation.”

Jolie has faced several upheavals in her personal life this year. Days after she won the struggle to allow Maddox entry to the US, she split from second husband Thornton and later announced that she had also severed ties with her father, actor Jon Voight.

It is clear that her number one priority now is Maddox and she is considering moving to England so he can be educated here. She even hints at being a mother to other children in future. “I would love for my kids to go to school here. We’re looking for a place outside of London – I’d like my children to grow up with some space.”

She has a support network of friends and is adamant that there will be no reconciliation with Thornton. “There is not a chance that I will ever get back with Billy,” she says.

With such a traumatic private life Jolie could be forgiven if she wanted to be self-centred but she is determined to continue the campaign to ban landmines and raise awareness with children in the UK. “Children should grow up to be aware of what’s really going on in this world, how people are being affected in other countries that aren’t as fortunate as their own.”

Jolie, who once said about Lara Croft “I love everything she stands for”, now has more in common with the computer game heroine than she thought. In character, Lara fights villains; in person, Jolie will fight the landmine cause. And then she will go home to Maddox to play the role she loves best – being a mother.

* For more information on Adopt A Minefield go to www.landmines.org.uk