At the height of their romance, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were not only the envy of Hollywood, but of the entire world. They had everything. Unparalleled career success, an obscene amount of wealth and above all, a big and happy family. They started dating around 2007, and were officially married between 2014 and 2019. For the span of that mostly blissful decade, Jolie and Pitt were a bona fide Hollywood first family.
In 2016, Jolie had filed for divorce, in what was the beginning of the end for their fairytale love story between. Although they have never completed the actual divorce process (and therefore remain legally married to date), they were granted a legal separation in April 2019.
The Possibility Of Joy
The separation cut a deep wound for Jolie, as she revealed to Harper's Bazaar in 2019. "It (the separation) was complicated," she recounted. "I didn’t recognize myself anymore, and I’d become... how do I say this, smaller, insignificant, even if I didn’t show it. I was profoundly, deeply sad. I was hurt."
Beyond the pain that she had to endure, she found that there was another side to the experience. "On the other hand, it was interesting to tap into this humility and sense of insignificance," she continued. "It’s a lesson I pass onto my children: the idea of renewal, and through it all, the possibility of joy. I had to rediscover the joy."
Unfortunately for the Changeling and Tomb Raider star, her heart was not the only thing that was broken in the process. With the children in the picture, Jolie found it a lot more difficult to strike a family-work life balance, something which she says had a kind of negative impact on her career.
The couple has six children together. The first, Maddox Chivan was adopted by Jolie before she began her relationship with Pitt, although the Troy and Moneyball star would also later adopt the boy. In the course of their relationship, Jolie and Pitt also adopted a further two children, from Ethiopia and Vietnam respectively.
Change In Family Situation
As they were famously christened by their fans, 'Brangelina' had their first biological child together in May 2006. Their family grew even further when the twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline were born to the couple in July 2008.
In quite the creative move, the two parents decided against leaving the first photos of their children in the inevitable hands of the paparazzi. They would instead sell them and give the proceeds to charity. For the first photos of their three biological kids, they raised an impressive total of $21.6 million, which went to UNICEF and the Jolie-Pitt foundation.
After the separation, taking care of the kids naturally became a bit more challenging and Jolie consequently decided to become even more selective with the work that she committed herself to.
"I love directing, but I had a change in my family situation that's not made it possible for me to direct for a few years," she said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in April. "I needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so I kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs. That's really the truth of it."
Jolie and Pitt have continued slugging it out in court, with a push to finalize their divorce and a previous, drawn-out battle for custody of their kids.
Consequences Of Separation
For instance, Jolie's legal team requested that John W. Ouderkirk, the presiding judge over their divorce settlement case be replaced, as he still had an active relationship with Pitt. Ouderkirk is in fact known to both, given he was the one who officiated their wedding in 2014.
In response to the application, Pitt's lawyers decried the fact that it was the children who would hurt the most as a result of a protracted process. "Unfortunately, the individuals hurt most by Jolie's transparently tactical gambit are the parties' own children, who continue to be deprived of a final resolution," they argued.
Pitt and Jolie first started to grow close as they were working on their 2005 action comedy film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Pitt was at the time, still married to Aniston. Jolie was categorical in her denial of accusations that she was wrecking her co-star's marriage.
"To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive," Jolie was quoted. Her protestations notwithstanding, she did end up together with Pitt, eventually.
Their investment in one another went deep, as is now profoundly evidenced by the consequences of their separation.