Marcia Lynne "Marcheline" Bertrand (May 9, 1950 – January 27, 2007) was an American actress.
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 divorced in 1978. 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 her split from Day in 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.
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 7½ year battle. Her children, Angelina Jolie and James Haven, and Jolie's boyfriend,
Brad Pitt, were at the hospital at the time of her death.
