ANGE HEALS HER HEARTACHE
THE ACTRESS OPENS UP ABOUT ENDURING EMOTIONAL TURMOIL
She may have made a name for herself playing strong and stoic female leads, but Angelina Jolie has hinted that in real life, her drawn-out divorce from ex Brad Pitt left her feeling “broken” and “overwhelmed”.
The actress, 45, opened up during an interview to promote her new movie Those Who Wish Me Dead – revealing she connected with the themes in the film after having endured her own emotional trauma in recent years.
“We all have times in our lives where we feel broken, and I was in a period like that. I’ve had my share of things that made me feel … you know, hard to speak too much about it, but just overwhelming or broken,” she shared with Entertainment Tonight. “I’ve had this many times in my life … It’s a part of something when you feel you just want to kind of hide under the covers or you’re not sure what you got left in you.”
The star, who split from Pitt, 57, in 2016 after two years of marriage and another 10 as a couple, admitted she was “drawn” to the character of Hannah in the thriller (read more about the film on page 79) and that the part was “very healing” for her to play due to their similar emotional struggles. “I felt a little beaten up in my own life, as we all do at times, and I felt like I wasn’t holding myself together and I felt a little broken and the idea of just getting through the fire – just getting through the damn fire,” Jolie told Access Hollywood during another interview. “Whatever it takes, with everything coming at you, get through it. So when you feel that way as a person and you have the great opportunity to have a piece of art that you can manifest that experience and that growth through a character,” she continued. “Quite literally, we go through that fire, and it’s hot and it’s hard. When we got to the other end, it did really feel like we’d done something.”
Despite her therapeutic new role, Jolie still appears no closer to a resolution with Pitt. After almost five years of back and forth, the pair are still locked in a legal battle over custody of five of their six children – Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and
“I wasn’t holding myself together” – JOLIE
Vivienne, 12 (Maddox, 19, is a legal adult). And while the mudslinging between the former spouses has been mainly left up to their lawyers to do behind closed courtroom doors, Jolie has still managed a few subtle swipes at Pitt in recent times.
When discussing her return to action films after almost a decade hiatus, the actress hinted it was her divorce that impacted her career choices and that she’s been forced to take on more acting roles so as to spend more time with her children. “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 told Entertainment Weekly. “I needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so I kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs.”
With the pair’s custody war still raging on (see breakout), it seems fans might be seeing Jolie on the big screen for a while.