Angelina Jolie, tattoo diarist By Karen Thomas , USA TODAY
It takes a moment to calculate, but Angelina Jolie says with certainty that she has 11 tattoos.
But she's careful. Tattoo talk tends to lend credence to the bad-girl image she's trying so hard to buck. A motherly Barbara Walters urged the actress to stop marking her body and keep a journal instead.
Jolie sees it differently. Her tattoos are her diary.
"Usually all my tattoos came at good times," she says. "A tattoo is something permanent when you've made a self-discovery, or something you've come to a conclusion about."
Some of those good times were temporary: She has had her famous "Billy Bob" arm tattoo lasered off. The large dragon that was under her ex-husband's name remains.
A Buddhist monk applied her latest tattoo, a series of symbols on her right shoulder, just after she adopted her Cambodian son, Maddox: "I asked for it to be done in Buddhist Sanskrit, which is part of (Maddox's) history."
Roughly translated, it's a prayer of protection for her and her family. It makes its film debut July 25 in Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
Among her other tattoos:
• A Tennessee Williams quote on her left forearm: "A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages." Says Jolie: "I have a prayer for everyone when I see people who aren't living fully, who aren't happy. You can see someone in the grocery store who doesn't look as if they fit in their life, and they have a dream they're not fulfilling, and it makes me sad." Jolie got it shortly after Girl, Interrupted.
• A black cross "right here," Jolie says, pointing to her groin. "I got that the day before I married Jonny" (Jonny Lee Miller in 1995). "It was all symbolic, and it was a good thing, nothing dark."
• The Latin phrase Quod me nutrit me destruit ("What nourishes me also destroys me") on her stomach.
• The letter "H" on her left wrist, which she got while dating Timothy Hutton. But she has said it represents her brother, Jamie Haven.
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