Angelina Jolie: "Troubled Teens Should Visit Africa"  6/29/05

Angelina Jolie wishes her childhood therapists had just arranged to drop her off in Africa because such a trip would have ended years of self-abuse.

The actress insists her experiences as a charity worker in the world's trouble zones have taught her to be less selfish and realize there are people far worse off than she is.

But doctors who tried to get to the bottom of Jolie's personal teenage problems when she was in high school insisted on linking her behavior to the fact she came from a broken home.

She says, "The doctor was probably going on about my father and mother while I was doing acid on the weekends and bleeding underneath my clothes.

"I think now that if somebody would have taken me at 14 and dropped me in the middle of Asia or Africa, I'd have realized how self-centered I was, and that there was real pain and real death real things to fight for. I wouldn't have been fighting myself so much.

"I wish when I was thinking about suicide, I'd have seen how many people are dying each day that have no choice in the matter. I would have appreciated the fact that I had a choice."