‘My focus is our children. It’s been a difficult time’
about her attempts to rebuild her life after the break-up.
Sitting cross-legged in a hut near a jungle clearing in Cambodia, the actress told Afghan-born BBC journalist Yalda Hakim: “I don’t want to say very much about that, except to say it was a difficult time and we are a family.
“We’ll always be a family. And we will get through this and hopefully be stronger for it.”
After filing for divorce Ms Jolie’s lawyers said she wanted to end her two-year marriage “for the health of the family”.
Ms Jolie was said to have become increasingly upset over how heartthrob Pitt, 53, was bringing up their six children.
She was later granted sole custody of the youngsters – Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins, Knox and Vivienne.
Maddox, Zahara and Pax were adopted from orphanages in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam. The other three are their biological children.
Ms Jolie said: “Many, many people find themselves in this situation. We’ve been through a difficult time.
“My focus is my children – our children. But we are and forever will be a family. I am coping with finding a way through to make sure that this somehow makes us stronger and closer.”
Ms Jolie first became a parent after adopting Maddox in March 2002 while she was married to her second husband, actor Billy Bob Thornton.
She had previously been married to British actor Jonny Lee Miller.
Ms Jolie met Pitt in 2005 on the set of the film Mr & Mrs Smith, around the same time as his divorce from Friends actress Jennifer Aniston.
They became Hollywood’s most celebrated were said to be than £300million.
Ms Jolie has increasingly focused on her humanitarian efforts as a Special Envoy for the United Nations, fighting for refugees.
She told how she fell in love with Cambodia through her work there in 2001.
Ms Jolie has also established a foundation designed to promote social development in rural Cambodia.
Her movie, a harrowing historical thriller, tells the story couple and worth more of Angelina’s friend and former refugee, Cambodian Loung Ung, as a child. It is set to be released on Netflix.
It tells how Ms Ung survived under the 1975-’79 communist Khmer Rouge regime, which is believed to be responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians from starvation, disease and execution.
Ms Jolie said she hopes the film will help to educate the world about the brutality of Pol Pot’s evil regime and also shed light on young people surviving in war zones today.