Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie know that you can't make the world more beautiful just by posing for pictures.
The world's sexiest activist duo announced Wednesday that their newly formed Jolie/Pitt Foundation will donate $2 million to the humanitarian organizations Global Action for Children and Medicins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders.
"In the most troubled parts of the world--places that much of the world has abandoned, MSF is always there," Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, said in a statement issued by her and Pitt's philanthropic and political adviser, Trevor Neilson. "I have seen these brave men and women working in war zones and horrific conditions and I deeply admire them."
Mr. and Mrs. Smith have never been known to shy away from a cause, either.
After holing up in Namibia for several months to await the birth of their first child together, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, the comely couple donated $300,000 to the African country's state hospitals to buy maternity ward supplies and equipment. Then, the entire $4.1 million Pitt and Jolie reportedly scored for the first pictures of Shiloh went to charity.
All of which happened after the two hit up Live 8 in London last year; traveled to Ethiopia, where Jolie adopted her second child, Zahara; and spent Thanksgiving in Pakistan to visit with earthquake victims.
"Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt not only care, but more important, are taking concrete action to address the fact that there will be 20 million children orphaned by AIDS by 2010, and millions more orphaned by tuberculosis, malaria and conflict or whose parents are sick and dying," Jennifer Delaney, U.S. director for Global Action for Children, said about the couple's latest gesture.
Pitt and Jolie are also planning to spend time in New Orleans, where Pitt will be filming David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and checking in on the winner of the eco-friendly architecture contest he recently sponsored. The Fight Club star kicked in $200,000 and headed up the jury responsible for picking a design to jumpstart the rebuilding process in some of the most hurricane-devastated areas of the city.
Jolie, of course, has maintained an open checkbook mentality for quite some time. Last year she contributed $500,000 toward the opening of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children in Washington D.C. and pledged up to $5 million over the next 15 years to set up a wildlife refuge in her son Maddox's native home of Cambodia.
Meanwhile, although Pitt and Jolie are committed to making this world a lovelier place to live, we're not so sure what their intentions are for their own home.
According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, Jolie picked up more than $370,000 worth of artwork last weekend at a Los Angeles show for the British graffiti artist Banksy, the man responsible for doctoring 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut album, in which he gave the heiress the head of a dog. Jolie's acquisitions included a white bust with a bleeding bullet hole in the forehead and a portrait of a man being hit in the face with a pie.