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 also voiced the DreamWorks animation "Kung Fu Panda" (2008), the first work in a major family franchise, later reprising her voice role in the sequels "Kung Fu Panda 2" (2011) and "Kung Fu Panda 3" (2016). After her mother's death in 2007, Jolie began appearing in fewer films, later explaining that her motivation to be an actress had stemmed from her mother's acting ambitions. Her first film in two years was the thriller "Salt" (2010), in which she starred as a CIA agent who goes on the run after she is accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. Originally written