When Angelina Jolie isn’t battling bad guys as Lara Croft, she’s helping the world’s 35 million refugees as a United Nations goodwill ambassador.

Jolie got involved in helping refugees in 1998 while reading the script for the recently released movie Beyond Borders, a film about a woman who helps refugees. Jolie said she was so moved by the script that she wanted to travel to Africa’s war-torn Sierra Leone to witness firsthand the refugee crisis there. She called the United Nations and arranged a trip. “I wanted to learn more. I … felt I should be more responsible about what I was doing with my life,” said Jolie.

Jolie began her work for the United Nations in 2001. “I wanted to get more people interested. I get really angry at the lack of certain things being done,” she said. “You could die tomorrow and you’ve done a few movies, won some awards–that doesn’t mean anything,” Jolie said. “But if you’ve built schools … or done something to make things better for other people, then … life is better.”
The United Nations recently named Jolie its first-ever U.N. Citizen of the World.