Look at these photos of a young Angelina Jolie from the NY Post:

By STEVE GARBARINO

She’s never been “America’s Sweetheart.” Nor “The Girl Next Door.” America’s sweetheart doesn’t have tattoos. The girl next door doesn’t carry around vials of Billy Bob’s blood. No, let Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan play those dull roles, ready-made for Oprah audiences.

On a Hawaiian family holiday: The future Lara Croft, her mother Marcheline Bertrand, and brother James Voight.

Angelina Jolie is an original, despite being morphed into “Brangelina” of late. While the “Pretty Woman” and the cuddly Cupie Doll of yore have been in arrested development, Jolie, now 31, has evolved with each year.

From 2000’s “Girl, Interrupted” – in which she nabbed an Oscar at the age of 25 for her moving performance as a drug-addled teen – to her latest role as mother and U.N. ambassador (and yes, the girlfriend of Brad Pitt) – Jolie has grown from a wild Goth provocateur to a woman of the world and expectant mother.

But as the pictures on these pages show, she was once a big-eyed, sweet-faced teenager with a past that has seldom been reported on – until now.

These intimate snapshots come courtesy of Allan Mezo, a former boyfriend of Jolie’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, a French actress who is currently battling cancer. Jolie has repeatedly called her 55-year-old mother – as ravishing as Angelina in her heyday – “her best friend.”

Mezo, 61, a merchandise broker, dated Marcheline and helped raise Angelina – or “Angie,” as he calls her – shortly after Marcheline split from Jon Voight. They divorced in 1978. Angelina and her father seldom speak.

No matter. Through her paternal troubles, her eccentric marriage in 1999 to Billy Bob Thornton, her trysts with women, and her controversial onstage kiss with brother, James Haven Voight, Jolie was just fine. At least she is now.

Jolie today, at 30

According to Mezo, her mother can take credit for that. She sent him these pictures, shot over a holiday in 1983, to let him know that the young Angelina and Jamie were growing up healthily enough.

Marcheline sent him the snapshots “out of the blue” 10 years after their breakup, Mezo says.

“Angelina is 13!” she writes in the accompanying letter obtained by Page Six. “She is studying to be an actress and a playwright . . . My children have grown up quite splendidly. Jamie is 15 and aspiring toward a career in film marketing and distribution. He also loves basketball!”

Mezo says that Jolie’s mom set her on the path to caring for the less fortunate.

“She was so kind, so caring, so generous – she was honestly like an angel,” he says. “Her children meant everything to her. Of all the people I have known in my life, she was easily one of the best. And Angie has got that from her. That is why she does so much work for the U.N. and wants to adopt needy children. I think all the good things you see in Angie, she got from her mother.” Mezo met Marcheline in the late 1970s in New York. It was a passionate affair, and Mezo says he eventually moved in with the family, which was living in Manhattan. When they migrated to Los Angeles, he came with them, acting, he says, as Jolie’s unofficial stepfather.

“I cared for them all so much,” he says. “But we met just at the wrong time. She was still married to Jon Voight. She told me that he had not treated her well, and I think there were other women involved. She found it so painful and it made it hard for her to trust another man.”

In the personal letter, Marcheline expresses sorrow for dropping him. “Perhaps I was just in too much emotional pain back then to appreciate you,” she writes. “The truth is, I never would have made it through that difficult time without you.”

Mezo responded to the letter, but he never heard from Marcheline again. “I want her to know how proud I am of her for how Angie appears to have turned out,” he says.

We’ll second that.

– With reporting by Lee Brown

Those lips! Those eyes! That stupid hat! Introducing Angelina Jolie as just another teen. A peek at the geek behind the goddess…

‘All the good things you see in Angie, she got from her mother.’