Jolie wants another child
2002-05-20 12:29
Bangkok - Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, taking a break from shooting her latest film to visit a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, says she would love to adopt another child.
Jolie, who went to the camp as part of her work for the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), adopted a young Cambodian boy with her actor husband Billy Bob Thornton in March after shooting the action film Tomb Raider in neighbouring 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 180 km (112.5 miles) west of the Thai capital of Bangkok.
Jolie, who won an Oscar for her role as an unhinged teenager 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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