It doesn’t matter if you ‘don’t care’ about celebrity relationships: when Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt announced their split, there was a gasp heard ’round the world.
And then, they split. We were devastated, too.
Brad got his word in via a GQ cover interview back in May this year. Now, Ange has one-upped him by airing her side of the story – kinda – via a Vanity Fair piece. (No offence to GQ, but Vanity Fair is the bees knees of celebrity coverage.)
In a piece that painted her as the glamorous yet down-to-earth earth mother just trying to make things work, Ange refuted Brad’s insinuation that their globe-trotting lifestyle had been a breaking point.
“[Our lifestyle] was not in any way a negative,” she said. “That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children . . . They’re six very strong-minded, thoughtful, worldly individuals. I’m very proud of them.”
Obviously, she and Pitt have six kids together: Maddox (15), Pax (13), Zahara (12), Shiloh (11), and the twins Knox and Vivienne (both 9). Every one of them makes an appearance in this interview, floating in and out in a peak domestic setting (Ange sued for full custody).
“They’ve been very brave. They were very brave,” she said of her kids. When asked to clarify when, she answered, “In times they needed to be.”
She then offered this cryptic statement, which strongly hints that the times her kids needed to be brave were not from the divorce, but rather the events that led up to that point.
“We’re all just healing from the events that led to the filing . . . They’re not healing from divorce. They’re healing from some . . . from life, from things in life.”
Details around what happened before the split are minimal; at one point, Brad was being investigated by the Department of Children and Family Services over allegations that he was abusive towards Maddox on a private flight, but the case closed with no finding of abuse.
Still, writer Evgenia Peretz notes that there’s “anger and pain” beneath Ange’s surface; she later revealed she deals with her pain in a very private matter.
“I was very worried about my mother, growing up—a lot,” she said. “I do not want my children to be worried about me. I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right even when you’re not sure it is.”
Have a read of the full piece HERE.
Photo: Anthony Harver / Getty.
