The sexiest woman alive is sitting so close to me that I can read her tattoos.

And I would take the time to read them if I were not sitting so close to the sexiest woman alive.

When you're sitting this close, you just want to stare at her face.
OK, I'm bragging a bit, but it's not every day you get to sit so close to, well, you-know-who.

Angelina Jolie's face smolders on the cover of the current Esquire magazine, having been voted — by a poll of horny guys, I suppose — as being the ‘‘Sexiest Woman Alive!’’

No argument here.

Sitting in a barren hotel suite in Century City, Calif., wearing fashionably tight black jeans and a moderately low-cut blouse, the actress is laughing at the sound of her new title.

‘‘It's a compliment, and I appreciate it,’’ she says, ‘‘but no woman ever sees herself that way. Like any woman, I can dress up and look sexy at times, but most of the time, I'm just a mom, or some goofy person trying to get through her day.

‘‘The funny thing about that magazine article is the timing,’’ she adds. ‘‘I spend most of my time these days changing diapers. I guess that's what being a single mom can do for you.’’

The Oscar-winning beauty, who plays Colin Farrell's mother in the new Oliver Stone-directed epic ‘‘Alexander,’’ even though at 29 she is only one year older than her ‘‘son,’’ has been considered the sexiest woman alive by many people since she first burst on the scene in the 1998 HBO movie ‘‘Gia.’’

Even in the role of a mother, on- screen and off-screen, her sensuality comes across.

‘‘I know I'm a very sexual person, so I understand how that can come out. I often feel sexual. But I have a lot of different sides; that's only one side hiding inside me.

‘‘But I don't feel particularly sexy right now,’’ she explains. ‘‘To feel sexy, you need to have a man or woman in your life who makes you feel that way. I don't have anyone in my life. I'm not involved with anyone so sexy is not something I feel.

‘‘However, there are days when I feel beautiful, and it has nothing to do with what hair and makeup people do for me. For instance, I feel beautiful when I'm in another country, I'm burnt from the sun and I'm doing something I care about. Or, I feel beautiful when I'm sitting in a hammock with my son. That's when I feel particularly connected to being a woman, and that's when I truly feel beautiful.’’

Is this the same Angelina Jolie who kept a vial of then-husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood dangling from her neck?

Is this the Hollywood wild child who banished her father (actor Jon Voight) from her life after he went on television and pleaded with her to seek professional help?

Is this the same actress who sent a collective shiver through TV land when she put a little too much sisterly love into a kiss with her brother at the Oscars?

In a word — yes.

But it is also the same Angelina Jolie who adopted a Cambodian orphan three years ago. It is the same woman who became a dedicated and hard-working goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. And it is the same woman who is trying to get a law passed in Congress to protect the legal rights of children who come to this country from dire circumstances.

Apparently, she is all those women.

‘‘When I was young, I had no sense of purpose,’’ she says. ‘‘I was experimenting with my life and that led to a lot of the trouble I found myself in. I think the reason I got in so much trouble was that I was scared. I may have looked tough on the outside, but I was terrified. I didn't know where I fit in this world.

‘‘All I knew at the time was that making movies wasn't enough for me. I always felt kind of lost, like a caged animal. Now, being a mother, traveling around the world and finding things worth fighting for, I've grown into a person with a purpose. I am so much stronger now than I was 10 years ago. I am anchored.’’

No Stone unturned

Jolie has always admired Oliver Stone's work, so when she heard he was preparing his script for ‘‘Alexander,’’ she asked if she could read it. She emphasizes that she had no intention of being in the movie.

‘‘I just wanted to read the script, like I would a novel. I knew that if Oliver was involved, the script would be interesting.’’

When Stone offered her the role of Olympias, the scheming mother of Alexander the Great, Jolie questioned whether she was right for the job. After all, the slight age difference between her and Farrell was a concern, although there is precedent in Hollywood. (Angela Lansbury was only three years older than Laurence Harvey when the pair played mother and son in the 1962 film ‘‘The Manchurian Candidate.’’)

‘‘I worried about the age thing but decided that if Oliver and Colin felt I could pull it off, then I would try.

‘‘The reason I wanted to try was that I really connected to her on a certain level. I connected to her as a mother. I don't think I could have played her if I wasn't a mother.’’

In the movie, which was filmed on three continents and reportedly cost $150 million to make, Jolie's Olympias will stop at nothing, even murder, to protect her son and to nudge him to his ultimate destiny.

‘‘She is a mother at a specific time in history, but she is first and foremost a mother,’’ the actress says. ‘‘Everything is about her child. All her dreams are about her child.

‘‘In order to play someone like that, you cannot think of her as evil. I had to believe — and I played her this way — that her obsession and her madness were only to protect him. These other people were a danger to him, so whatever she did was in his interest.

‘‘As a mother, I truly understand that you will do anything to protect your child. Yes, she is a dark, wicked person, but as an actress, you have to make the audience believe that her motives were pure. She always put her son first.’’

Jolie's son Maddox always comes first. He has been her constant companion since she walked into a Cambodian orphanage three years ago and cradled his sleeping body in her lap.

Although she is able to give birth, she said she never felt the urge.

‘I don't feel as connected to blood as I do to other people,’’ she told Get Out a year ago. ‘‘Family is something you earn.’’

She said her son has emerged from the terrible twos as a ‘‘fantastic human being.’’

‘‘He's coming into his own as a person,’’ she says in a motherly gush of pride. ‘‘He's in full conversation now, and the funniest things come out of him. He's officially become the little man I live with. We sit on the couch and talk about life.’’

Her nearly non-stop work schedule since she adopted Maddox, her new life as a mother and her extensive travel as a goodwill ambassador have slowed the tabloid feeding frenzy that dogged her earlier in her career.
In fact, she has been relatively tabloid-free for the last couple of years, except for the occasional screaming headline about her reuniting with Thornton (she laughs and says it's not true), or about her alleged affairs with almost everyone on the set of ‘‘Alexander’’ (also not true).

‘‘I hope I'm done with all that,’’ she says of her tabloid days. ‘‘Don't get me wrong; I still like being a celebrity, but not so I can shop and go to movie premieres. I like being a celebrity because it opens certain doors and allows me to help people.

‘‘When you see a school being built, a hospital opened or a well dug in a region that desperately needs those things, you realize how little the glamour of Hollywood matters. There are much more important things than being a movie star.’’

Like being the sexiest woman alive.