ANGELINA WANTS
TO ADOPT SECOND CHILD
Copyright 2002 www.reuters.com
[ May 19th 2002 ]
Hollywood
actress Angelina Jolie, taking a break from shooting
her latest film to visit a refugee camp on the
Thai-Myanmar border, said Sunday she would love
to adopt another child. Jolie, who went to the
camp as part of her work for the U.N. High Commission
for Refugees adopted a young Cambodian boy with
her actor-husband, Billy Bob Thornton, in March
after shooting the action film Tomb Raider in
neighboring Cambodia.
"I would
love to adopt another child, from wherever there
is a need," she told reporters. My husband's nervous
every time I go to another country. For me it
makes perfect sense to go to an orphanage and
find a child that needs a home," said Jolie, wearing
a tribal embroidered smock given to her by the
refugees. Swarms of refugee children came out
to greet Jolie at the camp, in a jungle-clad valley
112 miles west of the Thai capital of Bangkok.
Jolie, who won an Oscar for her role as an unhinged
teen-ager in "Girl, Interrupted," was named a
goodwill ambassador by the UNHCR last August and
has visited camps in Cambodia and Namibia.
She said
her visits had helped prepare her for her latest
film, a love story shot in Thailand about a volunteer
doctor who worked in refugee camps in Cambodia
and Africa during the 1980s, called Beyond Borders.
"Having been to these camps, I've never been so
nervous that a film does justice to the people
involved," she said. "My heart's more for here
than the film business." Thai camps are home to
some 120,000 refugees, mainly from the Karen ethnic
minority, who fled fighting between Myanmar troops
and ethnic independence armies. The actress donated
a television, video player, sports equipment and
over 4,000 sarongs - one for every woman in the
camp.
Jolie
said she was impressed by how the refugees coped
with the camp's cramped conditions and hoped they
would be able to return home in the near future.
"I'm always surprised by the people. They seem
very happy with what little they have. But obviously,
as human beings and after what they have been
through - they should have more."
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