Angelina Jolie practicing silent treatment

Angelina Jolie … ah, the good old days, when she inspired her husband to sing and talked openly and honestly about her personal life.

But, unfortunately for those of us who cover Angelina Jolie, these days the star is handling things very differently than she did just a few years ago.

Asked a question by Access Hollywood about her relationship with Brad Pitt at the recent Los Angeles premiere of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” Angelina cut off the interview. “I don’t think that’s what I’m here for tonight,” she said.

Although she said it with a smile, Angelina still deflects any questions about her personal life after a year filled with speculation. “I don’t want to keep discussing anything,” she said on “The Today Show.”

But, wait … is this the same girl whose lingering kiss with her brother and vial of her husband’s blood around her neck raised national eyebrows?

Not only has she now zipped her famous lips, Angelina has even gone so far as to have her lawyer issue a warning, threatening legal action should she be asked any personal questions at the “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” press junket, saying she would, “end the interview, leave the room and take the tape.”

It’s a far cry from the Angelina we grew to love. That’s the one who told Access Hollywood in March, 1999, “I’m strangely relaxed with interviews. I feel like I’m just home.”

Or the one who mentioned to us during the “Girl, Interrupted” junket in December, 1999, “I want everyone to know the real truth of what’s going on with me.”

Her truths?

Self mutilation:

“I was trying to feel something,” she told Access. “You get this romantic thing about blood and I really hurt myself. I nearly went to the hospital. I nearly cut my jugular vein.” (Girl, Interrupted – Dec. 1999)

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Bi-sexuality:

“They have written about my relationship with a woman,” she told Access. “They have summed it up and made it not the beautiful thing that was.” (Girl, Interrupted – Dec. 1999)

And multiple relationships with co-stars:

“I said if he ever cheated on me, i would beat him to near death.” (Tomb Raider – June, 2001)

Through the years, she has always been open, honest and certainly not afraid to go for shock value.

On Golden Globes night in 1999, after winning the best actress award for the HBO film, “Gia,” Angie jumped into a pool, gown and all, taking our producer with her!

A year later, during the 2000 awards show season, the first signs of Angelina’s free spirit emerged, as she continually laid mouth-to-mouth lip-locks on her brother, James Haven.

Two months later, she ran off and married Billy Bob Thornton at a Las Vegas chapel.

The couple became famous for their tattoos. Later, they wore vials of each other’s blood around their necks. “We kind of signed our life away to each other legally and with blood, (so) that there is no possible way anybody can separate or walk away from this,” she said at the time.

Words to regret. As we all know, that didn’t last.

Last year, a single Angelina nearly knocked Access’s Billy Bush off his chair. Asked if she was dating anyone, she responded, “I have a lover. I have lovers.”

To which there had to be a followup, and it arrived last November. Asked what she meant by “take a lover,” she replied, “To take a lover. To decide to have one.”

Whether or not she has taken Brad Pitt as a lover remains a mystery. But the answer to why she is keeping quiet about her relationshp may lie in a comment she made to Access Hollywood back in 1999.

“I’m really a shy person,” she said then. “And I’m really uncomfortable with people looking at me or judging me.”