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Marcheline Bertrand (May 9, 1950 - January 27, 2007) was an American actress of French-Canadian and Indigenous Iroquois decent. According to daughter Angelina Jolie , Bertrand who is often wrongly identified as a French actress: My mom is as far from French Parisian as you can get. She's part Anishinaabe Indian, from Chicago. She grew up in a bowling alley that my grandparents owned ^[1].

Bertrand married actor Jon Voight on December 12 1971 . The couple had two children: director James Haven and actress Angelina Jolie. Bertrand and Voight separated in 1976 and divorced in 1978.

In 1978, Bertrand met documentary filmmaker Bill Day of Saviors of the Forest, Missionary Positions. Day and Bertrand lived together for 12 years in Beverly Hills and New York City. Numerous miscarriages ended their hopes of having their own children. As business partners in Woods Road Productions, they developed a film project called Amazonia and sold to it to film director Ridley Scott, but the project never took off.

After her split from Day in 1993, Bertand turned her attention toward producing. She was the executive producer of a documentary Trudell, about Native American activist John Trudell. It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.

Bertrand studied with Lee Strasberg during her early years as an actress. Many years later her daughter would study with The Actors Studio. During a recent interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, Angelina Jolie credited her mother rather than her famous father for getting her involved with acting.

She was grandmother to Angelina's four children, Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt and Pax Thien Jolie.

Towards the end of her life, Bertrand preferred to keep a low profile and did not grant interviews. She died from ovarian cancer in Los Angeles, after a 7 1/2 year battle. Her children, Angelina Jolie and James Haven, and Jolie's partner, Brad Pitt, were at the hospital at the time of her death. ^{[2] [3]}

• Lookin' to Get Out (1982)
• The Man Who Loved Women (1983)

1. ^ http://fansites.hollywood.com/~ajolie/int34.html
2. ^ ABC news http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=2830154&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
3. ^ People magazine http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20010082,00.html

• Marcheline Bertrand at the Internet Movie Database