Angelina Jolie Is Buzzing

About protecting the bees and the environment.

- By Kathleen Hou

Angelina Jolie has sent me a movie. It starts with a steady pan across a cluster of conical plants resembling Marge Simpson's beehive, an azure sky behind it, and the sound of gently trickling water. A few bees dip in and out of frame, and the camera slowly zooms in on one particularly fat specimen, its lower body curling in the blossom. The 16-second film was shot by the director/actress on location at her garden in California, and features one of her lesser-known passion projects.

Before she sent me the movie, Jolie and I were talking about her role as Guerlain's Godmother of the Women for Bees Program (yes, that is her official title). Over Zoom, one of the most famous women in the world sort of looks like us. Her WFH setup is austere-a blank white wall, a black rolling office chair-and she's serious, yet enthusiastic, as she describes the program, a joint venture between Guerlain and UNESCO that focuses on promoting female beekeeping entrepreneurship and is now in its third year. Bees and honey are central to many of Guerlain's signature products, including its Abeille Royale skin care line. Through the Women for Bees initiative, Jolie travels on a yearly mission trip, most recently to the Yucatán Peninsula, where the Melipona beecheii, a type of bee sacred to ancient Mayan civilization, is threatened with extinction. Here, she talks about her version of self-care, being a change agent, and how we can help support and preserve the world's bee population.-KATHLEEN HOU

On her attraction toward bees