People: Jury acquits Ohio man of stalking Gwyneth Paltrow

A jury has acquitted an Ohio man of stalking Gwyneth Paltrow.

The verdict was announced Wednesday in the case against Dante Soiu, who was accused of sending the Oscar-winning actress 66 letters and packages in recent years.

Paltrow testified last week that she felt threatened because Soiu had been charged in a previous case in which pornographic messages and sex toys were sent to the actress in 1999 and 2000.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was confined to a mental institution.

Soiu testified in the current case that he wrote to Paltrow in recent years because he wanted her forgiveness for his earlier actions and still harbored a desire to marry her at the time.

Paltrow testified that Soiu’s correspondence referenced marriage and her death.

Angelina Jolie returns to Cambodia as director

Between bites of spicy Cambodian curry and fried fish with rice, Angelina Jolie Pitt explains how this tiny country with a tumultuous past changed the course of her life.

She first visited Cambodia 16 years ago to portray “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” – the gun-toting, bungee-jumping, supremely toned action hero that made her a star. Soon after, she adopted her first child from a Cambodian orphanage and returned again and again on humanitarian missions. Now, she’s back for another movie but this time as a director, and the subject matter is a far cry from Lara Croft.

“First They Killed My Father,” is based on a Khmer Rouge memoir written by survivor Loung Ung that recounts the 1970s Cambodian genocide from a child’s perspective. The film, which she is directing and co-wrote with Ung for Netflix, is in Khmer, with an all-Cambodian cast and according to Jolie Pitt “the most important” movie of her career. During a break from filming, she talked to the Associated Press about how she feels a satisfying symbiosis between her life and work.

“When I first came to Cambodia, it changed me. It changed my perspective. I realized there was so much about history that I had not been taught in school, and so much about life that I needed to understand, and I was very humbled by it,” said the 40-year-old, who grew up in Los Angeles where she felt “a real emptiness.”

She was struck by the graciousness and warmth of Cambodian people, despite the tragedy that left an estimated 2 million people dead.

Her fondness for Cambodia is mutual, says the country’s most celebrated filmmaker Rithy Panh, who says “First They Killed My Father” will be the first Hollywood epic filmed in Cambodia about the country’s genocide.

“I don’t think they authorized Hollywood to come here. They authorized Angelina Jolie. It’s not the same. She is special. She has a special relationship with the Cambodian people. There is a mutual respect,” said Panh, her co-producer.

Jolie Pitt expects to return to hold the film’s premiere in Cambodia at the end of the year, before its release on Netflix.