Queen BEE

How a starring role in Tomb Raider led to a new mission for Angelina Jolie—empowering women while protecting the honeybee in Cambodia and beyond.

- Frances Hedges

We all have those moments when we transform our lives based on which road we take...a decision that helps us grow. The turning point came for actor Angelina Jolie years ago: “I feel very fortunate that I reached this place in my life all those years ago,” she shares with Harper’s Bazaar.

Angelina is reflecting on her first visit to Cambodia in 2000, when she was filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider on location at the Ta Prohm Temple in Angkor Wat. That shoot was to be the start of a lifelong relationship with the country where she went on to adopt her eldest son, Maddox, establish a foundation, and buy a home whose protected acres have offered a safe haven at difficult moments in her life. “For me, going there was an awakening of many things in the world I didn’t know about, like what it means to be a refugee... I felt very honoured when, years later, I was able to become a mother to a Cambodian son and have citizenship in the country”, she says. “I feel at peace when I’m in Southeast Asia.”

Angelina’s most recent trip to Cambodia, for the inauguration of the latest phase of the Guerlain X UNESCO Women for Bees programme, is the reason we are speaking on Zoom today, Angelina dressed casually in a black tank top with loose hair and a fresh face. The interview has been postponed several times already, though not without good reason: Angelina delayed her return to LA from Cambodia in order to fly to Yemen, where she