One of the enduring questions behind Angelina Jolie’s film Changeling is why a little boy pretended to be a distraught mother’s missing son. Now after almost 80 years, that mystery has been solved.

PEOPLE has exclusively obtained a 25-page narrative the then-15-year-old Arthur J. Hutchins wrote in 1933, detailing how and why the Iowa-born runaway - whose own mother died when he was 9 - fooled the police, the real missing boy’s closest friends, and even the missing boy’s dog and cat in 1928.

Hutchins began the masquerade primarily to get as far away as possible from his stepmother, Violet.

“A person doesn’t realize what a hell this world can be at the hands of a step-mother that doesn’t love or want you,” wrote Hutchins, who called himself “a boy adventurer,” in a document provided to PEOPLE by his family.

“I said, ‘No, I didn’t know Walter’ but then I heard them say something about California,” wrote Hutchins. “So I said I was Walter Collins because I was sure that would be my best way to get to California.”

When Christine Collins, who is played by Jolie in the Clint Eastwood-directed thriller, met the boy claiming to be her son, she told police that they had been mistaken, but no one listened. Instead, police booked her into the psychiatric ward for what they called “peculiar behavior.”

An Apology to Mrs. Collins

The real Walter Collins was never found and may have been the victim of a notorious serial killer of the era, Gordon Stewart Northcott. Hutchins would finally confess to the hoax and eventually show remorse for what he had done to Christine.

“I know I owe an apology to Mrs. Collins and to the state of California,” wrote Hutchins, who spent more than two years in the Iowa State Training School for Boys in Eldora, Iowa, as a result of his actions.

Arthur Hutchins would grow up to sell concessions at carnivals and even made it back to California as a horse trainer and jockey. He died of a blood clot in 1954, leaving behind a wife and young daughter, Carol.

“My dad was full of adventure,” Carol Hutchins tells PEOPLE. “In my mind, he could do no wrong.”

For more about the real story behind Changeling, pick up PEOPLE Magazine on newsstands now

Who’s your Favorite Star Under 35? PEOPLE.com and the People’s Choice Awards are counting your votes! Click here to vote now!

Source:www.People.com

Angelina Jolie can seem like a superwoman - dashing around the globe with her impossibly cute kids (not to mention Brad Pitt!) in tow.

But some feats - like her recent humanitarian trip to Afghanistan followed, just days later, by a high-profile awards show appearance - can exhaust even her.

“I woke up at 3 in the morning with four kids with jet lag and two babies,” a weary Jolie, 33, told the Los Angeles Times recently, hours before she presented an award to Clint Eastwood. “I put myself together for a few hours and go out. And then I go home. This is my job.”

Still, she shows no signs of settling down in Hollywood. “I don’t dislike it here,” the Oscar-winner told the newspaper. “I just really do love to travel. I love other cultures. And I love raising my kids in the world. I’m so fortunate that I get to do that.”

“I got pregnant right in the middle of %26#91;filming%26#93; and I think partially because of it,” she explained. “I was so emotional about children that I think something in me kicked into gear.”

Who’s your Favorite Star Under 35? PEOPLE.com and the People’s Choice Awards are counting your votes! Click here to vote now!

Source:www.People.com

Jennifer Aniston says Angelina Jolie has a lot to learn about being discreet.

In an interview in the December issue of Vogue, out Nov. 19, Aniston says that, though there’s no love lost between her and the woman who ended up with ex-husband Brad Pitt, Jolie should have been much more circumspect about the romance, which blossomed while Pitt and Aniston were still married.

“There was stuff printed there that was definitely from a time when I was unaware that it was happening,” Aniston, 39, says of comments Jolie had made to the same magazine a year earlier. “I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. … That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool.”

Rumors that she is “clingy” or “needy” in love are off-base, she says.

“This whole ‘Poor lonely Jen’ thing, this idea that I’m so unlucky in love? I actually feel I’ve been unbelievably lucky in love,” she says.

RELATED GALLERIES:
• 2005: Post-Jen, Brad vacations with Angelina %26 Maddox
• See ALL of Jennifer’s PEOPLE covers!
• See Brad go from Sexiest Man Alive to proud papa of six!

Source:www.People.com

For the first time, Angelina Jolie has described what happened between her and Brad Pitt on the set of Mr. %26 Mrs. Smith - and she insists she never had any intention of breaking up his marriage to Jennifer Aniston.

When she first met her costar on the set of the thriller in 2003, “I didn’t know much about exactly where Brad was in his personal life,” Jolie, 31, says in the January issue of Vogue, according to excerpts published in the New York Post. “But it was clear he was with his best friend, someone he loves and respects.

“And so we were both living, I suppose, very full lives. … I think we were the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom.”

But “Brad was a huge surprise to me. I, like most people, had a very distant impression of him from … the media,” she says.

“Because of the film, we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized, ‘God, I can’t wait to get to work.’ … Anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair.”

They didn’t start thinking about a relationship right away, she says. “It took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we’d earlier allowed ourselves to believe. And both knowing that the reality of that was a big thing, something that was going to take a lot of serious consideration.”

The two remained “very, very good friends” from the time the movie wrapped in 2004 until after Pitt and Aniston announced their separation in January 2005, Jolie says.

Jolie says that the time she spent getting to know Pitt before his split was “not as exciting as what a lot of people would like to believe. We spent a lot of time contemplating and thinking and talking about what we both wanted in life and realized that we wanted very, very similar things.

“And then we just continued to take time. We remained very, very good friends - with this realization - for a long time,” she says. “And then life developed in a way where we could be together, where it felt like something we would do, we should do.”

In fact, it was her son, Madddox, now 5, who helped seal the deal. (Jolie and Pitt are also parents to Zahara, 23 months, and Shiloh, 6 months.) One day, Maddox “just out of the blue called him Dad,” says Jolie. “It was amazing. We were playing with cars on the floor of a hotel room, and we both heard it and didn’t say anything and just looked at each other. So that was probably the most defining moment, when he decided that we would all be a family.”

Jolie also says she’d be willing to meet with Aniston, but “That would be her decision, and I would welcome it.”

Pitt has said he and Jolie would not wed until all couples can legally marry, and Jolie agrees that tying the knot is not a priority. “We both have been married before, so it’s not marriage that’s necessarily kept some people together,” she says. “We are legally bound to our children, not to each other, and I think that’s the most important thing.”

Source:www.People.com

Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins may be only four months old, but they’re already characters of their own.

“They’re great. They’re still so little, but they do %26#91;have their own personalities%26#93;,” Jolie told reporters at the DVD launch for Kung Fu Panda and the premiere of its companion adventure story, Secrets of the Furious Five in Hollywood on Sunday.

Knox and Vivienne are “starting to get very smiley,” their proud mom said. “They’re at that %26#91;stage%26#93; where their personality really starts to shine.”

As for the rest of the brood, they share a love of their mom’s work. “I think it’s a great film, and it’s brought a lot of joy to children - and to my children, absolutely,” Jolie told PEOPLE at the event. “My kids love it. They’re very very proud, they’ve got mom %26#91;Tigress%26#93; dolls.”

“I was pleased to see how excited so many people were,” she told PEOPLE.

At the premiere, held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, furry Panda characters wandered around and danced while costars Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman chatted with fans and press. Jolie and the rest of the cast were on hand also as DreamWorks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg presented a check for $1 million to the Conservation International in support of their efforts for the preservation of pandas in their natural habitat.

Jolie told PEOPLE shortly before the presentation, “We are so privileged in everything we get to do in this business, and the amount of money this film has made. To be able to share that and do some good always feels good.”

Source:www.People.com

Angelina Jolie loves shooting things up onscreen, but she wants to make sure her kids understand the difference between make-believe and reality.

“We don’t take war and violence lightly, but we don’t hide it from anybody,” the actress tells British Harper’s Bazaar for its December issue. “Listen, my kids play video games. I let them play with toy soldiers.”

Jolie, 33, says she believes in an honest approach with her children and wants them to be aware that violence exists. She also wants them to differentiate between the gun-wielding characters she plays in movies and real-life violent acts.

Positive Reel Roles

Jolie, who currently stars in Changeling, says she also tries to find parts with positive role models for her three daughters - Zahara, 3, Shiloh, 2, and Vivienne, 3 months. “I tell stories that are about the type of woman where I think there’s something about her that will be fun for my daughters to see.”

And what does the actress, human rights activist and mom see when she looks in the mirror today? “I am still, at heart - and always will be - just a punk kid with tattoos.”

RELATED ARTICLE:
• Brangelina hits the beach in France!
RELATED GALLERY:
• Knox %26#38; Viv make their WORLD debut!

Source:www.People.com

Before surprising Clint Eastwood this week at the Hollywood Film Festival Awards Gala, Angelina Jolie traveled to the other side of the world for her first trip to war-torn Afghanistan.

Jolie, a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Refugee Agency, met refugees who have returned to their post-Taliban homeland to rebuild their lives after fleeing in 2001. She also visited projects by Afghan Hands, an organization helping women and children, inspired by her work with refugees. “After seeing real suffering,” she tells PEOPLE, “you never complain anymore.”

What’s the first thing she did after returning home? “Hug the kids.” - Mary Green

For more on Jolie’s trip to Afghanistan, including exclusive photos, get this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

RELATED ARTICLE:
• 2005: Angie fights for Kenyan refugees
RELATED GALLERY:
• See all of Angelina’s PEOPLE covers!

Source:www.People.com

Angelina Jolie has returned from a two-day humanitarian trip to Afghanistan this week, visiting poverty-stricken families, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The actress traveled Wednesday and Thursday to regions where thousands of former refugees have returned to the country to face crowded, squalid conditions.

“The courage, resilience and quiet dignity of returnee families rebuilding their lives against the kind of adversity few of us can imagine shows the human spirit at its best,” Jolie said.

According to the UN, more than 5 million Afghans have returned home since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Another 3 million registered Afghans are still in exile in Pakistan and Iran.

Source:www.People.com

Taking a break from promoting her upcoming movie Changeling, Angelina Jolie hosted a symposium on international law and justice Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations headquarters in New York. “Over the past seven years, I’ve worked with UNHCR and I’ve traveled around the world trying to bring attention to refugees,” she said. “It’s been a remarkable education.”

Jolie, who has visited dozens of war-torn countries around the world, spoke passionately on behalf of the victims she’s met. “I’ve seen refugees return to live among the same people who attacked them,” she said. “They are returning to the same lawlessness that sent them running in the first place. I’ve seen aid workers tear up as they put ladies on a bus and say, ‘I don’t know what we’re sending them back to.’”

“I don’t know if the ICC is the answer. And I don’t know what type of court is, or what it would need to be to make all of us agree and make it strong enough,” Jolie admitted. “But I do know this: No mother who had her children killed in front of her, no young girl sold into slavery, no boy kidnapped and forced to be a child soldier and no young girl like the 3-year-old I met in Sierra Leone, who had her limbs cut off, should be expected to simply forget. No one should have to choose between peace and justice.”

It’s been a busy couple of days for the Changeling star, beginning with her Today show appearance and her interview with the New York Times.

In addition to the symposium, sponsored by the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, Jolie joined Microsoft Corp and 25 leading law firms to launch KIND, an initiative to provide legal counsel to immigrant childred who enter the U.S. without an adult. Over 8000 children, many of whom do not speak English and are victims of persecution, torture or trafficking, flee to the U.S. each year and are forced to wind their way through the legal system without an attorney. KIND hopes to fill that need completely by the year 2010.

RELATED ARTICLE:
• 2005: Angie fights for Kenyan refugees
RELATED GALLERY:
• See all of Angelina’s PEOPLE covers!

With six kids in the brood and thoughts of adopting another, Angelina Jolie can only imagine what people must be thinking.

“I mean, I know we seem crazy, just bringing them in one after the other, but we do plan,” she tells the New York Times. “We make sure one is absorbed completely into the family before we add another.”

And as each child grows up and becomes Internet-savvy, Jolie, 33, sees even more challenges ahead for her and partner Brad Pitt, 44. “There’s a lot we’re going to have to explain to them about how public their family is,” she says.

Jolie adds, “They all think I can’t do anything, that I’m just there to snuggle with. But the other day (son) Madd said, ‘Can you do a cartwheel?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I can.’ And he was like, ‘Wow, Mom.’ And I thought: ‘Oh, yeah. I can do some things. You wait. You’ll find out. I’m capable.’”