Angelina Jolie

Some fashion week models are wearing T-shirts backstage that tout Angelina Jolie's Global Action for Children to attract attention to the cause as they get their pre-show hair and makeup done. [WWD]

Amy Winehouse was denied a US visa to attend the Grammy Awards, but she may appear via satellite. [Us]  read more »

Angelina Jolie is pregnant, according to a source close to the 32-year-old actress and her partner, Brad Pitt. Whether or not she is expecting twins, as some rumors have suggested, was apparently not confirmed by the insider, who contacted Us.  read more »

Our intrepid political reporter Jason Horowitz is following Rudy Giuliani around Florida this week. On Rudy's press plane, the legendary actor Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Deliverance), a supporter who is traveling with the presidential hopeful today, took a break from such topics as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the nature of the media and the normal guyness of Mr.  read more »

A work by Banksy, the faceless London artist who has entangled the city’s residents in a high-brow game of Cat and Mouse, just sold on eBay for nearly $400,000.

Buying the piece—one of the artist's typical graffiti numbers, this one depicts an artist in an old-fashioned getup putting the finishing touches on the word “BANKSY”—may prove to be the easy part. The work adorns a wall on Portobello Road in London’s bohemian-chic Notting Hill neighborhood.

“I am selling the wall because I can't really justify owning a piece of art worth as much as it is,” said Luti Fagbenle, the owner of the property on which the graffiti is sprayed. He also said that the artist had set up scaffolding in front of the wall on a busy Sunday morning, so he could complete the work without being seen.

“A few hours later the scaffolding went down. And there it was,” Mr. Fagbenle added.

After it was initially offered for £208,100, the piece attracted 69 bids in total. Whoever purchased the painting will reportedly be responsible for replacing the wall if removing the work is part of their plan. The enigmatic artist has collected a coterie of famous fans. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt picked up a Banksy painting in 2006 for some £200,000.  read more »

This week, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ate more fast food with their family while on vacation in Mr. Pitt’s childhood hometown of Springfield, Missouri. It seems they’ve moved on from McDonalds, KFC and convenience stores—at least for the moment—this time getting some slices at Arris’ Pizza.

The pizza joint’s kitchen manager told Perez Hilton that the other restaurant patrons left the family pretty much alone while they dined. And Lisa Pitt, the wife of the actor’s brother, Doug, confirmed reports of the pleasant, low-key nature of Springfield residents whenever the Pitt-Jolie clan comes to town. “We went to the movies last year when they came and people were just so cool. Even when we go shopping,” she told local reporters.  read more »

On Christmas, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie drove their brood in a Nissan minivan to McDonalds for tasty eats. But yesterday, New Year’s Eve, the 44-year-old charitable actor had traded in his soccer-mom whip for a more rugged set of wheels.

Mr. Pitt was photographed tooling around the Big Easy with Pax Thien Jolie, 4. The pair were burning rubber on something called an E-Z GO ST 4X4 Honda Powered Utility Cart—an army green, combat-ready vehicle that would have made a nice federal-funded addition to the city 28 months ago. The Burn After Reading star didn’t let the little tyke go hungry, though; he made sure to swing by an area convenient store for snacks before heading back to the ranch. It appears as if the father-son team were driving on city roadways, but no stink has yet been raised of Mr. Pitt’s Britney Spears-style grasp on Pax. Then again, it did happen last year.

A bevy of big-time stars spent the holidays basking under the sun in exclusive locales, but not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Instead of jetting to Martinique or Bali for Christmas, the celebrity couple and their family fa-la-la’d with the Colonel and Ronald McDonald.

On Christmas day, Mr. Pitt, who just turned 44, and Ms. Jolie, 32, drove in a white Nissan minivan to a New Orleans McDonald’s drive-thru, where they picked up a couple Happy Meals. (After a much-publicized stint shacking up at the tony Waldorf Towers in New York, the famous fam relocated to the Big Easy, where they're working on building a sustainable housing development in the city's 9th Ward.)

On Boxing Day, there was no foie-gras relapse or beef-Wellington withdrawal. After seeing The Water Horse at the local AMC Palace Theater, the Jolie-Pitts headed to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Brad Pitt sat down last night with Charlie Rose. Wearing a flannel newsboy-style cap, the actor gabbed about everything from his fortunate lifestyle to his various charity projects. But when the topic of conversation landed on the four children Mr. Pitt, 44, rears with Angelina Jolie, 32, things turned slightly bizarre.  read more »

Angelina Jolie’s fame as an actress may have been eclipsed by her notoriety as a humanitarian. An organization of Filipino farmers has just sent out the alarm asking for help from the 32-year-old actress, who has recently relocated to New Orleans with Brad Pitt in order to oversee construction of “green” housing in the city’s wounded 9th Ward. The leftist agricultural group, called Kilusang Magbubukid Pilipinas, petitioned the United Nations High Commissioner to dispatch Ms. Jolie to their country, where, they hope, she can survey, react and draw attention to the dire living conditions suffered by hundreds of refugees displaced by the decades-long plague of insurgencies. Willy Marbella, the leader of the farmers’ alliance, told reporters that the Mighty Heart star can help the group rid the countryside of guerillas.

Since the 1960s, some two million Filipinos have been displaced and more than160,000 have been killed by the violent clashes among the nation’s army, communist fighters and Muslim insurgents.

The curious aptitude of Ms. Jolie’s project titles, too, labors on. She just finished shooting Wanted, a film directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Add to that her other forthcoming efforts, Kung-Fu Panda and Atlas Shrugged, and one could almost compose a fitting haiku from IMDB alone—one that very nearly conveys Ms. Jolie’s ever-expanding role on the world’s political stage.

 

Zahara, the Ethiopian-born two-year-old daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, was conceived during a rape, according to the girl’s biological mother, Mentwabe Dawit. The alleged attack occurred in 2004 after Ms. Dawit, now 24, had finished working at a construction site in the nation situated on the Horn of Africa.

In an interview with Reuters, the woman described the violent ordeal: “He pulled a dagger, put one hand on my mouth, so that I could not scream. He then raped me and disappeared.” Ms. Dawit also said that she was afraid to admit to anyone that she was raped, because she lives “in a community where rape is considered a taboo, even if what happened happened forcibly." When Zahara, who was formerly named Yemsrach, was born, she was reportedly on the verge of dying. It was because of Zahara’s critical state, Ms. Dawit said, that her mother put the child up for adoption.

“I have never disputed the adoption of my baby by Angelina Jolie,” she said in the interview. “I think my daughter is a very fortunate human being to be adopted by a world famous lady. I wish them both all the success they deserve.”  read more »

On Thursday, Oct. 11, after six weeks of class, Maddox Pitt-Jolie had his last day at the Lycée Français on 75th Street. The mohawked 6-year-old was photographed leaving the school in his gym-class uniform alongside his movie-star mother, Angelina Jolie, who held under her arm a large booklet that his fellow kindergarteners had given him as a parting gift.  read more »

OK, it’s settled—Ann Coulter has just been pretending to be a hardened, ice-cold conservative! [Page Six]

Was Jon Voight, who was photographed last weekend going into the Waldorf=Astoria, visiting his estranged daughter Angelina Jolie? [Gatecrasher: 2nd Item]

New York Giants’ quarterback Eli Manning got booed uptown. [Page Six]  read more »

We've long been fascinated by the relationship between presumptively right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Clintons. Today, a little bit more of the love between the two camps may emerge when Mr. Murdoch takes the stage at 9:30 a.m. at the Clintong Global Initiative's annual meeting here in New York, to participate in a plenary-session panel discussion entitled, "Building a Global Multi-Ethnic Community," which is arguably what Mr. Murdoch is doing in the media universe. We've got reporters there and will get back to you on what he has to say.  read more »

The school is still adjusting to the chaos that ensues when his parents drop him off and pick him up.  read more »

Why did a Wall Street Journal reporter become a pawn of international terrorism? Michael Winterbottom’s well-intentioned but murky film has no answers.  read more »

Meet the man who made Angelina Jolie disappear and Mariane Pearl emerge.  read more »

Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, from a screenplay by Eric Roth, has been described as &ldq  read more »

On Dec.  read more »

By most standards, Anderson Cooper looks like a winner.  read more »

“The whole age of the soft interview is gone,” Janice Min said.    read more »

By most standards, Anderson Cooper looks like a winner.  read more »

The chicest, newest, grooviest thing you can do right now?  read more »

New York, the magazine that almost unmasked JT Leroy but didn't, revisits another one of its stories. "The first Brangelina baby photos hit the streets today," New York's Web site announces. "In April, New York imagined the moment. Did we get it right?"

The new item then painstakingly reviews how New York's predictions about the Pitt-Jolie baby media circus stack up to the facts—and how the magazine's mocked-up celebrity baby photos compare to the real thing. So: Did they get it right?  read more »

Brad Pitt was in the Dominican Republic on March 31 through the following day, Forbes reports, scouting real estate and smiling for photographers with the architects who refurbished his and Angelina Jolie's love nest.

But, with wireless connections, Blackberries and personal assistants, couldn't he do two things at once?

A poster identified as Brad Pitt posted a note on Archinect, a Web site that combines news and member comments about architecture and design, on March 31 to promote the trailer of his upcoming project Design:e2. The next day, Brad Pitt wrote again on the Web site to announce a collaboration between him and Bono, Bonnitt, and an appearance on Charlie Rose.

"Bonnitt brings together our resources and global influence to help enlighten the world about these important issues [sustainable architecture, design, and social consciousness] while also providing high design to the world's poverty stricken population."

But, later that evening at the somber time of 9:56 pm, Brad Pitt announced that he was withdrawing his membership from the site, offended by attacks against his architectural integrity, and returning to his "second choice" Web site. The link leads to the architecture blog BLDGBLOG, written by Geoff Manaugh, who is also a member of Archinect.

Is it possible Geoff Manaugh, whose posts are suspiciously close in time to the star's, pretending to be Brad Pitt? Manaugh, the winner of the World's Best Architecture Blog, is adorable, gets into arguments with his wife in public, and has become disgusted with "self-obsessed product-hunting."  read more »

So are we, Geoff. So are we.

UPDATE: Geoff wrote in and had this to say:

just for the record, the Brad Pitt thing wasn't me. I was too busy impersonating Colin Farrell on Design Observer... Anyway, my apparent lack of hilarity at the Pitt "joke" meant that the other Archinect editors thought I should be associated with it. Which was very nice of them.

- Riva Froymovich

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After the awful Eyes Wide Shut and the pretentious, hysterical Moulin Rouge , Nicole Kidman redeems  read more »

Tim and Nina Zagat are as sensitive about their reputations as some of the chefs they review.  read more »