Angelina Jolie critic Peter Stack wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble." She won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review. In 1999, Jolie starred in the comedy-drama "Pushing Tin", alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. The film met with mixed reception from critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized; writing for "The Washington Post", Desson Howe dismissed her as "a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of
Angelina Jolie contributing factor of her controversial image were tabloid rumors of incest that started when Jolie, upon winning her Oscar, kissed her brother on the lips and said, "I'm so in love with my brother right now." She dismissed the rumors, saying, "It was disappointing that something so beautiful and pure could be turned into a circus," and explained that, as children of divorce, she and James relied on one another for emotional support. Jolie's reputation began to change positively after she, at age 26, became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, later commenting, "In my