Angelina Jolie was the cover story for Vanity Fair, and she talked about her humanitarian work and her career.
But, naturally, everyone wants to know about how her divorce is going … and what came before it.
Careful and diplomatic as she was, Angelina did talk about Brad Pitt and what this whole divorce thing has been like. She probably said more than she intended to, actually.
Angelina Jolie tells Vanity Fair that towards the end of her marriage to Brad Pitt, things got bad.
Things since the divorce have been challenging, too — not just for her, but for the entire family.
(Remember, she has six children)
“It’s just been the hardest time, and we’re just kind of coming up for air.”
That’s understandable.
Also, “coming up for air” is a great way to describe that.
“[This house] is a big jump forward for us, and we’re all trying to do our best to heal our family.”
We don’t think that by “heal our family,” she means that she has any intention of reuniting with Brad.
(Despite his efforts to use custody talks to win her back)
Angelina added that “things got bad” in the summer of 2016, but then she rephrased:
“I didn’t want to use that word… Things became ‘difficult."”
We imagine that she is referring to Brad Pitt’s serious alcohol problem.
But we also get the feeling that what we know of their troubles barely scratches the surface.
Apparently Angelina’s interviewer asked if her celebrity lifestyle, involving a lot of world travel, was part of the problem.
Angelina says that this was not the case.
“[Our lifestyle] was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem.”
In fact, she says, her celebrity status and habit of traveling the world serve as an asset.
“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.”
Angelina’s children are pretty incredible.
In fact, she talks about how resilient they’ve been during all of this.
“They’ve been very brave. They were very brave. In times they needed to be.”
It turns out that she doesn’t think of the divorce as what’s putting so much stress on her or her children.
She’s hella vague about it, and deliberately so, but it sounds like things were bad well before whatever altercation Brad had with Maddox that prompted Angelina to report Brad Pitt for child-abuse.
“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.”
That’s probably as much as we’re likely to get while this is all so fresh.
She does talk about Brad, specifically.
“We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.”
That goal is kind of divorce, though, right?
At least, that’s what we assume that she means.
Angelina is, of course, putting the children first.
“I was very worried about my mother, growing up a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.”
It’s good that she can use her own experience to tie in to what her children might feel.
And into what she wants to avoid.
“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.”
Crying in the shower? Angelina Jolie has never been more relatable!
No, but in all seriousness, Angelina is absolutely doing the right thing by putting the emotional well-being of her children first in every situation.
(She’s so good!)
Speaking of Angelina’s family, she’s reconciled with her father, Jon Voight, after many years of estrangement.
She’s relied upon him from time to time during the divorce, which is super common for people in that situation at every conceivable economic level.
“He’s been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time. I had to do a therapy meeting last night and he was just around. He knows kind of the rule — don’t make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.”
It must be weird for her and her children, since Jon Voight’s politics are infamously abysmal.
(He’s not just a conservative — he endorsed Donald Trump, which is another level entirely)
But, hey, plenty of people have relatives with nightmarish political views.
Even those who support Trump.
So this is one of those “the stars: they’re just like us!” moments, but in a way that makes us all cringe.
Angelina Jolie also developed Bell’s Palsy last year — that’s a partial paralysis of the face — but she’s made a full recovery, for which she credits acupuncture.
(We know that acupuncture sounds ridiculous but, bizarrely, it can be wildly effective for treating certain conditions — remember that it was once used during a life-saving procedure for Richard Nixon’s VP)
So, basically, she’s had one hell of a couple of years.
We hope that things only get easier from here on out.
She — and her children — deserve good, peaceful lives.