Angelina Jolie has had one wild and woolly year.

And it's only June.

First she wins Hollywood's highest honor, an Academy Award, for her scene-stealing role in Girl, Interrupted and sets Oscar tongues wagging with her public display of affection for her older brother. Then she lands the role of nubile Net nymph Lara Croft in the film version of Tomb Raider, the cult video and PC game. Next, she squashes incest rumors by running off to Vegas and marrying Pushing Tin co-star Billy Bob Thornton after tattooing his name on her left arm.

You have to love this girl. Audiences do. And the press sure can't get enough of the brazen beauty's antics. Even movie studio honchos are salivating over her. Her Oscar, along with two Screen Actors Guild, two Emmy and three Golden Globe awards, catapulted the lush-lipped newcomer onto the elite list of bankable stars.

"Angelina is definitely in the top echelon of actresses," says producer Jerry Bruckheimer , who cast her in the auto-action flick Gone in 60 Seconds, opening Friday. "She is on everyone's A-list."

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But new hubby Thornton tops Jolie's list. The multitattooed, bisexual, knife-loving wild child, 25, says she has finally found contentment in her relationship with her "soulmate," the 44-year-old Arkansas-born actor/writer/director best known for Sling Blade.

"I never felt grounded before in my life," says the dark-tressed Jolie, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her Four Seasons hotel suite, next to a pile of just-signed posters for 60 Seconds. "I thought I was always going to be alone, that my life would always be about my work, moving from place to place, never really having a self and never, ever really calming down or feeling satisfied."

Wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and black boots, the daughter of amicably divorced parents (Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand ) says Thornton has changed, well, everything.

"Suddenly, overnight, I'm more content, more alive, and my life has taken on meaning. He is my strength, and he makes me so proud of myself and reminds me that everything is OK. Now, being centered, calm and safe, I feel more alive than ever and really free."

Jolie's enormous azure eyes glisten as she speaks of the man she got to know as a friend on the set of Pushing Tin (they played husband and wife), then fell in love with and married May 5 at a tiny chapel in Las Vegas. "He is the most amazing person I have ever met in my life. He is really a free spirit, bold, really strong and passionate and wild and all those things. But he is also a very kind person, a really good friend."

She felt so strongly about their emotional bond that she had his name tattooed on her upper arm more than a month before their unplanned wedding. Has Thornton (who has several tattoos) had "Angie" branded on him?

"I think he's going to. He wants to, and he has the design. But whenever I'm with him, I just don't want him to leave and go to a tattoo parlor. I want him to stay in bed, you know?"

That much was obvious at the 60 Seconds L.A. premiere Monday night. Walking the red carpet, a casually dressed (black leather jeans and a gray T-shirt) Jolie beamed as she nuzzled Thornton, clinging to his arm. Her eyes glazed with happiness as the newlyweds smooched for photographers who yelled, "Hey, Angie! Give us a little Billy Bob action!" Her brother, actor James Haven, followed close by, smiling, wearing shiny turquoise slacks and a snakeskin shirt.

Thornton, who has been married four other times and has three children, looks and sounds equally blissed out. "In terms of relationships, this may be the first time in my life that I haven't failed. Angelina is everything to me as a human being, as an artist and as a partner."

Even Dad has given thumbs up.

"My dad likes him," Jolie says. "I wasn't sure how it would work out. I mean, they are fellow actors. But my dad loves me so much, and he's never seen me so happy, so of course he likes him. They worked together, you know? I think it's funny that they both did U-Turn and they were so damn weird in it. We joke about that. 'Yeah, that's my family in that movie, the two strangest people!'"

Jolie made one previous trip to the altar. In 1995 she wed British actor Jonny Lee Miller, whom she met that year on the set of the cyber-thriller Hackers. Her wedding attire was black rubber pants and a white T-shirt, on which his name was scrawled in her blood. The couple separated shortly afterward but did not divorce until 1999. They're still pals and had dinner just two weeks ago.

Shortly before marrying Jolie, Thornton ended his engagement to actress Laura Dern, whom he had dated since his fourth marriage ended amid charges of physical abuse and a restraining order. He has been open about overcoming past alcohol abuse and eating disorders.

Jolie has been open about her controversial past, too, discussing her bisexuality and a passing penchant for self-mutilation.

The incest rumors, which she says upset her mother, began this year when she mentioned her brother (she calls him Jamie) in her Oscar acceptance speech, exclaiming, "I'm so in love with my brother right now."

That night, their father said, "They've always been very close."

Haven - who says, "I would die for her" - concurs: "I think after our parents' divorce, we became very close because it always felt like there was something missing."

Furthering the familial furor, the look-alike siblings posed in a lip lock for Elle magazine.

"That was my answer to . . . all the rumors," Jolie says with a flip of her shoulder-length black hair. "Here it is. A really big picture of me kissing my brother! The thing is that if I were sleeping with my brother, I would tell people I was. People know that about me."

She dismisses rumors about a private love-scene rehearsal with Antonio Banderas on the set of their just-wrapped film, Dancing in the Dark.

"God, that rumor was so predictable," Jolie says with a sigh. "I knew that one was coming. I could have written that story myself."

Still, she's baffled by her tough-chick label.

"It's so funny to have this cool image. I just think, 'God, if you only knew me like my family knows me and like Billy knows me.' I'm so soft with Billy."

As for her wild past, she says: "I haven't been with that many people in my life. Now I'm married to the love of my life, and I just want to work and not hurt anybody. I know the characters I play are crazy and strong and people think I am those characters, but there are other sides to me. I hope people don't think I'm a bad person."

Hot headlines don't hurt in the Hollywood name game. But it's not Jolie's personal life that has pushed her to the top. It's her raw talent and fearlessness.

"She does so much with just a look. Through her eyes, you can see into her soul, see both her joy and her pain," Bruckheimer says. "You want to watch her on screen, and that is what makes a movie star. Maybe it's genetic."

In the past three years she has managed to choose parts that would challenge seasoned actresses. She says that acting for her is like therapy.

But dark roles in HBO's Gia (the true story of model Gia Carangi, a heroin-addicted lesbian who died of AIDS) and Girl, Interrupted (as a seductive psychotic) left her emotionally drained.

Now she is looking for lighter parts that will "let me grow as a person and an artist."

Thornton is writing a film they can do together on, complete with a part for Haven.

"Yeah, I think we'll do that next spring," Jolie says. "I really don't want to be away from home anymore. After Tomb Raider ends in December, I just want to stay home, sit by him and watch him direct."

Her part in Seconds as Sway, Nicolas Cage's former-car-thief girlfriend, was written by Scott Rosenberg with Jolie in mind.

Seconds director Dominic Sena says: "She's definitely got the chops. . . . She's always trying to push the envelope, go where she hasn't gone before. And she brings a lot to the table. Those white dreadlocks? Totally her idea."

Jolie took the role of Lara Croft because she wanted to "go on an adventure." She looks eerily like the hacker heroine. "Yeah, well, parts of me do. And that is a little weird," Jolie says.

For the role, she'll have to train her butt off. Or rather, back on. She had lost weight from overwork and has already put on a few pounds for Raider, which will start shooting in July in Cambodia and Iceland.

"They are teaching me kick-boxing and street fighting, and I'm doing yoga, which is interesting," Jolie says. "I'm also doing deep-sea diving, ballet, weapons training, car racing, dog sledding and rowing. I've got to get my British accent down and go to manners classes because Lara was raised with upper-class manners that are broken down. I think that's really funny. Me in manners class."

All the physical training is starting to show results. She says she has never felt stronger or healthier.

"It's been good, especially now, when I really want to live because of him," Jolie says. "It's like I have never really wanted to take care of myself or had so much to live for. Now there is so much I want to do, and I need to stay strong. I want to live every day and enjoy it."

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