Marcheline Bertrand?qsrc=3044

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Marcheline Bertrand
Born	Marcia Lynne Bertrand May 9, 1950(1950-05-09) Riverdale, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 27, 2007 (aged 56) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1971–2007
Spouse(s)	Jon Voight (m. 1971–1980) (divorced)
Domestic partner(s)	Bill Day (1980–1992)

Marcia Lynne "Marcheline" Bertrand^[1] (May 9, 1950 – January 27, 2007) was an American actress.

Early life

Bertrand was born in Riverdale, Illinois, the daughter of Lois June (née Gouwens; 1920–1973) and Rolland F. Bertrand (1919–1974).^[1] She had a brother, Raleigh Bertrand, and a sister Debbie Bertrand. She was of French-Canadian descent on her father's side, and is a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier.^[2][3] However, her ex-husband Jon Voight has claimed Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois", and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife's exotic background.^[4] According to daughter Angelina Jolie, Bertrand was often wrongly identified as a French actress: "My mom is as far from French Parisian as you can get. She grew up in a bowling alley that my grandparents owned."^[5] In 1965, Bertrand's family moved to Beverly Hills from the Chicago area. She attended Beverly Hills High School, beginning with the sophomore year.^[6]

Life and career

Bertrand married actor Jon Voight on December 12, 1971. The couple had two children: actor James Haven and actress Angelina Jolie. Bertrand and Voight separated in 1976 and filed for divorce in 1978, which was finalized on April 14 1980. In 1978, Bertrand met documentary filmmaker Bill Day (Saviors of the Forest and Missionary Positions, among others). 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 it to film director Ridley Scott, but the project never took off.

After 1993, Bertrand 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 at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. 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.

Death

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, California. Her children, Angelina Jolie and James Haven, and Bertrand's domestic partner, Bill Day, were at the hospital at the time of her death.^[7]

In interviews with both Marie Claire magazine and Larry King Live (June 2007) her daughter Angelina Jolie stated that the name of her second son, Pax, was chosen out of a list of names picked by Bertrand just before her death. In an Esquire interview (June 2007) Jolie stated that her mother's side of the family tended to not be long-lived. "There is no longevity on my mother's side of the family. My grandmother also died young so my mother always thought it could happen to her." When a reporter asked Angelina Jolie where she got her empathy for the less fortunate, she said that she saw the joy her mother had in doing things for others. "It was never like something she had to do. She had a real joy."^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

Footnotes

References

• Marcheline Memorial Page
• Marcheline Bertrand at the Internet Movie Database
• Marcheline Bertrand at Allmovie
• Marcheline Bertrand's will – opens up in a PDF

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