Angelina Jolie: Modern-Day Josephine Baker

US actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie admitted to the press yesterday at the inaugural benefit for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation that she would like to adopt more children in the future.

"Most of the night I just thought about how quickly I want to adopt again. It's a very special thing. There's something about making a choice, waking up and traveling somewhere and finding your family," she said.

Jolie is already the mother of a 4-year-old Cambodian boy, Maddox, and recently-adopted 9-month-old Ethiopian daughter, Zahara. There have been rumors that she would adopt her third child from Russia.

"My dream is to have under one roof many different cultures and many different religions," she told the New York Daily News in 2003. "I think that would make for amazing people."

Jolie is not the first celebrity to create a "United Nations" for a family. She is in good company with another American actress - Josephine Baker.

Josephine Baker was an African American dancer, actress and singer who became a sensation in France during the 1920s and 1930s. She is best known for performing in a skirt made only of bananas, often accompanied by her pet leopard, Chiquita, who was adorned with a diamond collar. The leopard frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, where it terrorized the musicians, adding yet another element of excitement to the show.

Though based in France, she supported the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s, and protested racism in her own unique way, adopting twelve multi-ethnic orphans, which she called her "Rainbow Tribe." For some time she lived with all of her children, her husband, French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, and an enormous staff in a castle in France.

"The children were adopted for a reason, and one so simple that most people can't believe it," Baker said in 1959 to Stars & Stripes. "People can't believe until they see for themselves that human beings of every race, color and creed can live together as brothers. That is why we have rebuilt the village and established its attractions — so that people will come from everywhere to see the children."

On tours of the United States, Baker refused to perform in segregated nightclubs, and her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas, Nevada.

However, her "Rainbow Tribe" dream became disasterous as Baker went into debt trying to raise her family. She subsequently lost her husband in divorce with him citing that the children became too much of a burden. Princess Grace of Monaco, another expatriate from America living in Europe, had to bail Baker out of bankruptcy and given an apartment.

On April 8, 1975, her fortunes seemed to be turning to the better when she was the star of a retrospective show in Paris, Joséphine, celebrating her fifty years in the theater. The show opened to rave reviews, but Baker never benefited from it. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage less than a week later at the age of 68, and the show was cancelled.

Jolie and Baker have so much in common. Both of them became famous at a young age, have gone through numerous husbands and identify as bisexual. What a coincidence.

Hopefully Jolie (and Brad Pitt) won't adopt more children than she can financially handle.