By J. RANDY TARABORRELLI

Last updated at 08:09 16 April 2007

She wants it all - babies, fame, and to save the world. But what she definitely doesn't want is marriage. So - could it be true? Is Angelina getting ready to dump Brad?

Sitting at a bar in the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood is a blond, good-looking man with well-chiselled features on an instantly recognisable face.

"You know what it's like to be on the cover of every magazine, having your personal life dissected with all the lies, all the rubbish?" he asks me. He takes a swig from a bottle of beer and says: "It's hell. Certainly, pick on me - but why pick on Angelina? That's so low. She's such an amazing woman - like Supergirl, in every way."

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I had just happened upon Brad Pitt while walking through the hotel and went over to say hello. He was by himself, waiting for friends, and said: "I'm sorry if I seem to be taking my frustration out on you."

"So, how are things going with you and Angelina, anyway?" I ask. He smiles and replies: "Oh sure, like I'm going to talk to you about that."

His attitude isn't surprising in view of reports that Angelina Jolie is thinking about ending it with him after just a couple of years of unwedded bliss.

According to these stories, the actress recently left Brad to take care of their three adopted children, Maddox, five, Zahara, two, and Pax, three, and their own child, Shiloh, born barely a year ago, while she went to Chicago to work on a new movie called Wanted.

This was just a week after she had adopted Pax and told a newspaper in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he was adopted: "I will stay at home to help Pax adjust to his new life."

Next month, she's due in Prague for more filming and will then hit the road to promote another movie, A Mighty Heart. Meanwhile, Brad is supposedly at his wits' end as he tries to figure out how to handle the huge and sudden responsibility of parenthood (despite the typical Hollywood team of nannies and other functionaries).

Reports have it that the passion between Brad and Angelina has cooled in the past year and she's very close to breaking up with him. Considering these two have been generating news stories for more than two years - ever since meeting in 2004 on the set of Mr And Mrs Smith - their break-up would be the biggest showbiz story of the year.

To discover the truth, I have contacted some of her friends and associates. According to one of these reliable sources, Angelina, 31, is adamant she wants to return to work and doesn't appear too bothered about how she balances her career with motherhood.

"She took a couple of years off doing her work as a goodwill ambassador for the UN, spending time with Brad and the kids. Now she wants back into movies. If it were up to Brad, I think she would not work for a while, but it's not up to him.

"She believes she can have it all and, as she once told me: 'I will have it all. Just wait and see!' As for the headlines about her and Brad, she's used to controversy. It doesn't bother her much."

That is certainly true. The first time I met Jolie was in 2001 at a reception for her movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. She was wearing a flowing black gown with a plunging neckline which, along with her long, raven-coloured hair and heavy eye make-up, made her look more like a creature of the night than a movie star.

Seeming dark and enigmatic, she flirted openly with the male reporters. I couldn't help but wonder whether certain rumours about her were true. For instance, there was a lot of speculation at the time that she and her brother, James Haven, were in an incestuous relationship.

Why? Because when she won her Golden Globe in 2000 for Girl, Interrupted, she actually made out with him backstage, her arms around his neck, her lips all over his. It was pretty creepy. When I tackled her, she simply asked with an arched eyebrow: "Do I look like the kind of woman who would have sex with her own brother?"

I answered: "Well, I don't know what that kind of woman looks like."

"Exactly," she countered. Then, as she drifted off, she looked over her shoulder and winked at me. Confirmation or denial? I wasn't sure. One thing was certain, though: I'd never had a stranger moment with a celebrity.

It's interesting how her image has since changed. Today, Angelina Jolie is thought of as a philanthropic woman concerned about poverty-stricken countries and the adoption of disadvantaged children. As a UN ambassador, she is respected for donating money for hospitals and shelters.

Certainly, Pitt's status was elevated just by his association with her. "She's expanded his horizons," says a friend from his home state of Missouri. "He's a totally different man. It's like he's living with Mother Teresa now as she ministers to the poor, the sick, the orphaned."

Not long ago, it definitely wasn't Mother Teresa who sprang to mind when one thought of Angelina Jolie. In 1996, when marrying her first husband, British actor Jonny Lee Miller, she used her own blood to paint his name on the white shirt she wore at the ceremony.

Then, in keeping with her vampire image, she wore a phial full of the blood of her second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, around her neck.

She also admitted to being fascinated by knives, corpses and mortuary science (she took embalming classes in Los Angeles at the age of 15!) and said she was fascinated with sado-masochistic sex.

Talking of her first sexual relationship, she said: "I brought knives out and we had a night where we attacked each other. It was so primitive and it felt so honest. But then I had to deal with not telling my mother - and wearing bandages to high school."

She also said she was bisexual, admitting to an affair with actress Jenny Shimizu, who later observed Jolie "has a very dominant personality".

It's remarkable that Angelina has managed to reinvent herself, but what makes this process even more astonishing is that she achieved it at a time when many people blamed her for Brad ending his popular marriage to Jennifer Aniston.

There had been persistent rumours that Jolie and Pitt were romantically involved when the Friends actress announced her marriage to Brad was over. Less than a month later, Pitt and Jolie were photographed frolicking on the beach. But while the reputation of being "the other woman" might have destroyed the careers of some actresses, the scandal didn't even dent Jolie's image.

Remarkably, she has prospered using her own instinct and without a publicist. That is a rarity in Hollywood - a star who doesn't have at least one lackey to clean up private messes for public consumption.

Above all, she uses the media to her advantage. People close to her have revealed that she carefully orchestrates many of the photographs taken of her. She calls paparazzi and tells them where she'll be, and even asks for copies if she likes the photos.

Typical was when she collected her adopted son, Pax, from the Tam Binh Orphanage in Vietnam. A few days later, she staged photos of herself, Pitt and the kids and sold them to magazines for millions of dollars - then gave all proceeds to charities.

Her attitude was that the magazines would manage to get their own pictures in due course and she said privately: "I may as well control how they get them, make them pay and use the money for a good purpose."

Tellingly, an executive on the Hollywood magazine Variety said: "Nowadays, she is perceived as somewhat saint-like - a woman who only wants to do good in the world. When you're in her presence, she's so serene, you'd feel like an idiot asking a dumb question such as: 'So, did you break up Jennifer Aniston's home?'"

On the rare occasion when she has been forced to explain what happened with the Pitt-Aniston marriage, she has come across as most self-possessed. "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife," she said.

Only in January 2006, when Angelina was clearly pregnant, did she confirm she was carrying Pitt's child.

But then came the problems. "It's been downhill from there for them," said one of the couple's intimates. "It was too much too soon, especially for Brad. They're bickering an awful lot these days. They're like an old married couple with kids - and they never even got married."

According to Jim Cruse, who has known the actor for many years: "Brad always said he wanted a family. But you should be careful what you ask for. He got four kids in two years, all under the age of six. It's no picnic.

"Angelina is great with the kids - she loves her children. But they both still want to make movies."

Cruse says the couple are helped by being able to take the children to a day-care centre in nearby Burbank when they are working in Los Angeles.

Indeed, security at the popular Bright Horizons centre is at an all-time high now that the Jolie-Pitt brood is enrolled. Other parents are asked not to use mobile phones to ensure they don't take pictures of Pitt, Jolie or their children. "So it's not as if either Brad or Angelina is chained to the house with a bunch of screaming kids all day," says Jim Cruse.

Still, a friend of Jolie's seemed to suggest that Angelina could get out of the relationship easily if she chose: "She's been married twice before. She knows she's not the marrying kind, which is why she hasn't married Brad.

"He's much more domesticated. He'd marry her in a second if that's what she wanted. She doesn't. So, if it ends, I think she could extricate herself without too much trouble."

Her friends well remember, of course, when Angelina and Billy Bob Thornton were so inseparable it seemed impossible she would ever leave him. Yet that marriage ended very suddenly. Angelina explained that she "woke up one day and felt differently, and that was the end of that".

Added Jim Cruse: "I don't think she's ever really been content. If you ask me, this thing about her 'wanting it all' is just another way of saying she's never happy. The truth is that she makes no excuses for who she is. She thinks of herself as a survivor."

Angelina Jolie is a survivor. Although she comes from a broken home, it made her more resilient. She's made a fortune in a tough, cut-throat business and with her professional reputation still intact: she's well-regarded among her peers.

Her manager, Geyer Kosinski, vehemently denies she is placing her career over her family. "Angelina worked a total of only 35 days last year and is currently scheduled to work 40 days this year."

However, others in her camp tell a different story. They say she's got four more movies on the horizon: two this year - Atlas Shrugged, an adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel, and The Changeling, a drama directed by Clint Eastwood - and two more next year. Will she be able to manage it all - busy career and hectic home life? Who knows?

"Brad would be devastated if the relationship ended," concludes Jim Cruse. "She's a lot tougher than he is. She would see to it that he gets to see the kids because they think of him as their father. Then she'd just get on with her life."

Such thoughts make her out to be rather cold. But maybe that's how it has to be when a woman who wants it all is faced with the possibility of not being able to have it that way.

In trying to balance everything - movie star career, "husband", family life - something might have to give and probably - hopefully, anyway - it won't be the kids.

"But what's going to happen when she's left alone with a whole bunch of children and no man?" asked one concerned friend of the actress. "Is she finally going to be happy then? She'll have her independence, sure. But then what?"