Rising lesbian icon Angelina Jolie has admitted that she had an affair with a woman before she met her husband Billy Bob Thornton, reports the Sun.

She told the UK tabloid, "When I was 20, I fell in love with somebody who happened to be a woman, I wanted to be close to her because I had feelings for her."

The 25-year-old star who uses her middle name, Jolie, professionally, is the daughter of Oscar-winning-actor Jon Voight. She has always been open about her sexuality in media interviews.

Jolie first made lesbian heads turn when she co-starred in a little-seen female-bonding movie, Foxfire in 1996. She later told US lesbian periodical, Girlfriends Magazine, that she had fallen in love with her co-star Jenny Shimizu.

The intriguing actress who has numerous tattoos is known for getting married to her Hacker's co-star Johnny Lee Miller (who is best known for his role as Sickboy in Trainspotting) in 1996 wearing black rubber pants and a white shirt with the groom's name written in blood. It has also been reported that she has an extensive dagger collection.

In an Elle magazine interview about her Golden Globe award winning title role as Gia, a lesbian supermodel in the 70's who succumbs to drug addiction and was one of the first women to die of AIDS in the US, she said that the role allowed her to explore her sexuality.

When asked about her being bisexual, she said: "Its like somebody saying, 'Would you be with someone tall or of a different race?' Its such a dumb question. I married a man because I need somebody physically stronger than me. It just feels nice. I am always on top. It's really unfortunate. I am begging for the man that can put me on the bottom. Or the woman. Anybody that can take me down."

Jolie has also been voted the "actress most straight women would like to have sex with" by readers of a US magazine. When interviewed by British GQ magazine, she replied, "That's OK, because I'm the actress most likely to have sex with them."

She added, "I was open about it because I wanted people to know that I had been with a woman. I spoke about it because I'd discovered something wonderful and I thought people should know my experience was very real, very normal and there were a lot of things I learnt. It was beautiful and different so I thought I would share it. But people decided to make it shocking?"

Jolie who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted will appear in two major films this year.

Fans can catch Jolie in skimpy shorts when she plays Lara Croft, a tough and sexy adventurer in action-packed fantasy film, Tomb Raider, based on the popular video game of the same name.

She will also star in sexy thriller, Original Sin, opposite Antonio Banderas as his American mail-order bride.