Angelina Jolie Cries

Angelina Jolie says, her work as a humanitarian ambassador left her tearful and overwhelmed.

"The first two years, I just cried constantly," the actor told Newsweek magazine. "I couldn't really talk about the situation without being emotional. And I went through a period of just complete lack of hope."

Angelina Jolie also reveals for the first time that, when she became interested in working with refugees, she first had to convince the United Nations to overlook her rebel image reports People.

"I approached them. I think they thought I was a little crazy," she says.

Jolie first contacted the U.N.'s refugee agency, the UNHCR, six years ago. "I was very nervous to call the U.N. agency at the time," she says. "I [was] considered a rebel in Hollywood. At the time I was also a bit of the wild child.

"So first I went to Washington [to the UNHCR office] and I sat with everybody there and said, 'You know, I know you don't know me. You might have heard things about me. ... And I don't want to bring negative attention to your agency. If you could just help me, I'll pay my way.' "

She spent the next year and a half visiting camps in Africa, Pakistan and Cambodia. "With no cameras and with no press [I] had the opportunity to have this great education before I spoke at all. ... I was transformed in such an amazing way."

During her February visit to the Oure Cassoni camp on the border between Darfur and Chad, she came across a disturbed seven-year-old boy whose family had tied him to a pole to keep him from wandering away or hurting himself. The boy had spent 48 hours hiding in the bush after his village was bombed.

"I talked to him for like half an hour and just kind of looked at him for a long time before he touched me," Jolie told the magazine, "and there was a little boy in there who was open to a kind sound."

Jolie has visited camps in Africa, Pakistan and Cambodia as part of her work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said, she travels unaccompanied on commercial flights and does not care about people who describe what she does as celebrity tourism.

"I don't know if anybody saying that has spent the last six years of their life going to over 30 camps and really spending time with these people," said Jolie, who wants to return to Cambodia.

During her trip to Chad, Angelina Jolie says she was lucky to escape an abduction plot outside the United States! Jolie tells British paper News of the World, "It was in a small village. I won't say where, or with whom, but some gangsters planned to kidnap me and extort a massive ransom." Authorities in the foreign country uncovered the plans and Jolie says, "I was warned at the last minute, and managed to escape, luckily."

The mother of three says the incident won't stop her from visiting other nations as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. "I don't want to act like the Mother Teresa of Hollywood," Jolie says. "But I want to help where there is poverty and destruction. I love Brad [Pitt] very much and on our trips we pull together as a team. Things only get difficult when it affects our children."