Tattoos

Jolie’s inventory of tattoos has become the subject of much media attention and has often been addressed by interviewers. Jolie stated that, while she is not opposed to film nudity, the large number of tattoos on her body has forced filmmakers to become more creative when planning nude or love scenes. Make-up has been used to cover up the tattoos in many of her productions. She frequently adds or even changes existing tattoos and has said that all the tattoos she possesses have a special meaning. Jolie currently has twelve known tattoos, among them a Tennessee Williams quote “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages” which she got together with her mother, the Arabic phrase (strength of will), the Latin proverb “quod me nutrit me destruit” (what nourishes me also destroys me), and a prayer consisting of Buddhist Sanskrit symbols for her son Maddox. She also has three sets of geographical coordinates on her left shoulder indicating the places of birth of her children, N11°33′00″ E104°51′00″ (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), N09°02′00″ E038°45′00″ (Addis Alem, Ethiopia), and S22°40′26″ E014°31′40″ (Swakopmund, Namibia). Over time she covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including “Billy Bob”, the name of her former husband Billy Bob Thornton, a Chinese character for death and a window on her lower back; she explained that she removed the window, because, while she used to spend all of her time looking out through windows wishing to be outside, she now lives there all of the time.