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Angelina Jolie hints her next career might be in politics

Angelina Jolie in Mosul, Iraq, in June, 2018.

Angelina Jolie in Mosul, Iraq, in June, 2018. Photo: Getty

Angelina Jolie has hinted she could one day enter politics, as she urged global leaders to do more to help refugees and women in conflict zones.

Asked if she was moving towards a political career, the Hollywood star, an envoy for the UN refugee agency who has also campaigned on sexual violence against women, said she would “go where I’m needed”.

“If you asked me 20 years ago, I would’ve laughed,” she said in an interview with the BBC.

“I don’t know if I’m fit for politics, but then I’ve also joked that I don’t know if I have a skeleton left in my closet.”

When BBC interviewer Justin Webb pointed out that Jolie had not ruled out being one of the “30 or 40 Democrats running for the nomination next time”, the actor simply laughed.

Jolie said her work with the United Nations and other organisations enabled her to “get a lot done without a title”, but did not rule out a future switch.

“I honestly will do whatever I think can really make change and right now, I am able to work with a UN agency … to do a lot of work directly with the people in need,” she said.

“I’m also able to work with governments and I’m also able to work with militaries. And so I sit in a very interesting place of being able to get a lot done without a title and without it being about myself or my policies. So for now I’ll sit quiet.

“Right now I am able to work with a UN agency — that is the most in-the-field of all the UN agencies — to do a lot of work directly with the people in need,” she said.

The Oscar-winning actor has in recent years visited refugee camps to highlight the plight of those uprooted by war, and broadened her international efforts to protect women, working with NATO and governments to help stop the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Since 2001 Jolie has been on more than 60 missions with the UN Refugee Agency.

With 68.5 million people uprooted globally, she said more needed to be done to support refugees and host communities in developing countries.

Jolie, a mother of six who last year released her film First They Killed My Father about Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in 2012 with Britain’s former foreign minister William Hague.

-with AAP

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