[Angelina Jolie] in political appeal over child poverty

from The Irish Examiner

Outspoken actress Angelina Jolie has stepped into the political arena again, urging First Lady Laura Bush to push the American President to do more to provide poverty-stricken children around the globe with an education.

The Hollywood star, who yesterday gave her backing to a Gordon Brown premiership while heaping praised on the Chancellor, pointed out that Britain gives three times more cash to such programmes than the US.

A giggling Jolie told NBC’s Ann Curry her uncontrollable mirth was a hormonal result of her pregnancy with actor Brad Pitt’s baby.

The couple are currently in Namibia with their two adopted children, ahead of the birth. They have been named “the world’s most beautiful family” by People magazine.

“We just don’t know where it’s going to happen or where it’s going to be,” Jolie said.

Asked if there was a doctor nearby, she replied: “We’ve been smart about it. Things will be as they will be. I’m ready for anything.”

Reports had suggested the baby was due next week but Jolie also told Curry she was in fact not quite eight months pregnant.

Jolie conceded that the US did spend a considerable amount of money to ensure that poor people get an education.

But she added: “Britain gives three times more than us right now. They’re not richer than us, so I don’t know what the great excuse is.”

Told that her zeal for the campaign – she is a spokeswoman for Global Education Week – was reminiscent of Mrs Bush’s, Jolie laughed.

But the star who is one half of one of the world’s most famous couples had a message for another woman whose partnership puts her into the spotlight: “She should nudge her husband.”

She also said it was wrong for Americans to focus only on solving problems at home.

“It doesn’t make any sense just to fix your own house when your neighbours are falling into chaos,” she added.

Jolie said she believed her two adopted children, Maddox, four, from Cambodia, and one-year-old Zahara, from Ethiopia, would not have had an education in their homelands.

Maddox would probably have ended up on his own – garbage picking on the streets, she said.

On her giggling, she said: “I get hysterical now. It will go on for hours... It’s hormonal.”