Additional respect to Angelina Jolie for her brave editorial about her double mastectomy. It's one thing to go public with a difficult health decision. It's quite another to go public when the health decision you make is so directly tangled up with your persona. I don't mean to imply that Angelina Jolie's breasts have made her career but they sure as hell haven't hurt it. She's a global sex symbol and though she doesn't make as many movies as she used to she'll always be a beautiful sexual woman. She mentions in her editorial that she doesn't feel any less womanly. I hope she drives this point home with a really sexy movie some time soon.
I chose the word "additional" as a modifier for respect because "newfound" would have been inappropriate. I've admired her for a long time. Sometimes I am amused at how much philanthropic celebrities become targets of scorn in certain pockets of the media (I mean the shit Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon get!) and with certain sections of the populace but mostly when this happens I feel sad. I think deep down a lot of the anger that philanthropic celebrities stir up in us is shame-based -- this person is better than me! Yes, even if I was drowning in money. I personally love outspoken do-gooder celebrities but I'm also man enough to admit that my own charitable impulses (which I do have on occasion) are meager in comparison. I'm sure I would do charitable things were I suddenly blessed with hundreds of millions but would I use it to build schools and orphanages and so on? I'm doubtful. I'd more likely spend it on friends and family and shrines to great actresses (by which I mean investing in movies starring them which wouldn't get made otherwise).
So here's to Angelina - a seismic screen presence, a very good actress when she applies herself, but mostly a good person. She has demonstrated over and over again that she thinks about the greater good and cares more about the world than herself.
(Her boyfriend is pretty cool, too.)