Angelina Jolie is opening about her current life with her six kids, whom she shares with her ex, Brad Pitt. In a new interview with British Vogue, the 45-year-old star acknowledged her tough past couple of years, and how she’s moving past it.
Jolie has been living with her children — Maddox, 19, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and 12-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox — in Los Angeles amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their home is the former estate of legendary director Cecil B. DeMille, and Jolie shared that she picked the property because she wanted her kids to be close to 57-year-old Pitt, who lives only five minutes away. The two have been engaged in a hard-fought legal battle over the custody of their children, after she filed for divorce from him in September 2016.
Jolie said she and her family are making progress after struggling through a tough time.
“The past few years have been pretty hard,” she shares. “I’ve been focusing on healing our family. It’s slowly coming back, like the ice melting and the blood returning to my body.”
As for how they’ve been doing amid the coronavirus pandemic, she described her children as “capable” and “resilient,” and shared that they’ve been working together as a team to get through it.
“I think that like most families, we have had this bigger thing happening with the pandemic,” she says. “But of course you also have these life markers. We went into it having just gotten out of the hospital with Zahara [who underwent surgery last March], and we were so happy she was OK that we entered lockdown in a different state of mind. But, you know, there are also these other markers of life: Pax going into his senior year, but not being able to enjoy all that it is to be a senior; Zahara finally getting her driving license, but she’s taking the test with the driver wrapped in the full outfit with the masks. It’s not how you imagine these moments. But birthdays go on, and I think that for many people, it’s made us all feel very human together. There’s something beautiful about that.”
She noted that they actually look out for her at times, which made her feel her age.
“We were on the trampoline the other day, and the children said, ‘No, Mom, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself,'” she recalls. “And I thought, ‘God, isn’t that funny?’ There was a day I was an action star, and now the kids are telling me to get off the trampoline because I’ll hurt myself.”
“Even at their young age they know that what matters is to feel safe and loved and stable,” she adds. “To not see those you love harmed. To know your own mind and truth and not to live a lie.”
But Jolie is definitely looking forward to turning 50, and reflected on the life of her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died after a battle with ovarian and breast cancer at 56 years old.
“I do like being older,” she shares. “I feel much more comfortable in my forties than I did when I was younger. Maybe because… I don’t know… maybe because my mom didn’t live very long, so there’s something about age that feels like a victory instead of a sadness for me. So I like it. I’m looking forward to my fifties – I feel that I’m gonna hit my stride in my fifties.”
See Jolie’s full feature in the March issue of British Vogue available via digital download and on newsstands Friday, Feb. 5. All 27 international Vogues are dedicating their March issues to Creativity. Each issue is a celebration of those who encourage us to look at life in a new way, featuring portfolios of the brightest young stars in fashion, music, art and film, alongside inspiring editorials and extraordinary fashion through each Vogue’s local lens.
