“She insisted she wanted to learn first about the plight of refugees before being able to speak about it.”U.N. spokesman Pierre Bernard Le Bas
PAMPERED stars and Third World environments don’t always mix – but reformed Hollywood bad girl Angelina Jolie is an exception.
Not since Audrey Hepburn worked tirelessly for UNICEF in the 1990s has such a high-profile star been so visibly active on behalf of the United Nations.
And in an age of “cause-related marketing” – the cynical industry buzzword for celebrity charity endorsements – Jolie is not just getting dirt under her fingernails, she’s actually put herself in danger to focus world attention on the plight of refugees.
As a Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the 28-year-old star of “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” (opening Friday) has visited war zones in the Balkans and Sierre Leone, and toured refugee camps from Pakistan to Tanzania.
“She is extremely committed,” UNHCR spokesman Pierre Bernard Le Bas told The Post from Geneva.
“When we first got in touch with her in 2001, she insisted she wanted to learn first about the plight of refugees before being able to speak about it.
“She also insisted on visiting the places – she went to Sierra Leone and Tanzania first, and then she wanted to learn even more.”
What’s more, Jolie pays for her own flights and accommodations when she travels for the U.N., which Le Bas calls “exceptional.”
Jolie first became interested in humanitarian causes while shooting scenes for the 2001 action movie, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” in Cambodia, which is littered with land mines left over from the Vietnam War.
“It’s crazy, the thought that you really don’t know [where the landmines are],” she said at the time. “For people to live like that all the time . . .”
The Oscar winner spent the first six months of 2001 in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, meeting traumatized refugees – and in August 2001, she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR.
The U.N. has about 200 Goodwill Ambassadors worldwide – including Roger Moore, Geri Halliwell, Giorgio Armani and Danny Glover – who are part of a celebrity-endorsement program that started in 1953 when UNICEF brought actor Danny Kaye on board to do fund-raising and advocacy work.
Jolie – who follows in the footsteps of former UNHCR goodwill ambassadors Richard Burton and Sophia Loren – has done much more than pay lip service to her cause.
“She’s rolling her sleeves up,” says power publicist Steven Rubenstein, president of Rubenstein Communications.
“She’s not just floating into dinners on a red carpet. She’s donated the time, and that’s how you burnish your image.”
Jolie has personally detonated a land mine in Cambodia; has met with refugees in Namibia, Tanzania, Cambodia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ecuador; and has lobbied Washington to help immigrant orphans enter the United States.
She’s also donated $1 million to help Afghan refugees, another $5 million to establish a Cambodian wildlife preserve and $10,000 to rebuild a hospital in Sri Lanka.
And, of course, there’s Maddox, the 2-year-old Cambodian child she adopted after filming the original “Tomb Raider.”
The dedicated, loving mother Jolie has become seems a far cry from the tattooed wild child who grabbed headlines not so long ago with her knife-collecting hobby, a controversially passionate relationship with her brother and her just-plain-weird marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton, from whom she is now divorced.
“There are a few things that happened to her in the last few years that have made her a much more sympathetic figure,” Rubenstein says.
“She comes off as genuine, and when you couple that with her work with the U.N., she becomes this great ambassador. People feel they can identify with her.”
Le Bas is particularly enthused about Jolie’s ability to appeal to a new demographic.
“The two things that I immediately liked about her involvement was that she speaks about the work we do with passion,” he says, “and she reaches the younger generation by speaking in her own words.”
Jolie’s U.N. gig will have provided her with plenty of material for her upcoming role in “Beyond Borders,” a love story in which she plays an American ex-pat living in London who becomes involved in international humanitarian relief efforts.
The October release of the movie will coincide with Simon & Schuster’s publication of a journal Jolie has kept of her thoughts and experiences while traveling for the U.N.
All proceeds from the book, “Notes From My Travels,” will be donated to the UNHCR.
Tale of the tape
Angelina Jolie … ACTRESS … Audrey Hepburn
Los Angeles … BIRTHPLACE … Brussels
Lara Croft … SIGNATURE ROLE … Holly Golightly
Billy Bob Thornton … ACTOR EX-HUSBAND … Mel Ferrer
One, for “Girl, Interrupted” … OSCARS … One, for “Roman Holiday”
Bee-stung lips … ENVIED ATTRIBUTE … Swanlike neck
