Why the Hollywood humanitarian and UN superwoman is one of our Top 50 travellers in the world
First-edition books and knives. That's what Jolie is always looking out for on her travels, to add to her two burgeoning collections. And she gets around. Her work as Special Envoy for the UN has taken her on more than 40 field missions, meeting refugees from Kabul and Darfur, as well as on the Syria-Iraq border. She says she saves a third of her income, lives on a third and gives a third away. Her children, with ex Brad Pitt, are as international as her movements: Maddox (15), adopted from Battambang in Cambodia; Pax (13), from Ho Chi Minh City; Zahara (11), from Awasa in Ethiopia; and - the couple's biological children - Shiloh (10), born in Walvis Bay, Namibia, and twins Knox and Vivienne (eight) in Nice, France. Jolie has a tattoo on her shoulder of the geographical coordinates of each child's birthplace. She always takes her family with her on location, spending about £4million on chartered flights and £815,000 on private tuition a year; she's keen that her children immerse themselves in local culture, most notably eating crickets when they accompanied her on a Louis Vuitton shoot in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Family homes include a beach pad in Santa Barbara, California, and Château Miraval in Provence, where Jolie and Pitt were married and which houses an art collection worth £20million, including several Banksys.
This feature first appeared in Condé Nast Traveller January/February 2017