Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
BEING Brangelina’s bodyguard BURNT ME OUT
Meet the former SAS soldier who found working for the Hollywood couple and their brood too much to handle
At 51, Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham might be, as he puts it, the ‘ oldest and crustiest’ instructor on the Channel 4 series SAS: Who Dares Wins, but there are flashes of a glamorous life among the grit and gore. The show, back for a second series, features 25 members of the public going through the sort of selection process normally reserved for our elite Special Forces troops.
Channel 4 might have pulled off their own little coup by getting Billy on board, because it’s hard to think of someone more suited to a job that basically involves military muscle with a dollop of media savviness. His career in the Army, which started when he joined the Parachute Regiment in 1983, saw him complete the rigorous SAS training for real (480 soldiers started his course, only seven finished). He saw action in Belize, Northern Ireland,
Iraq and Afghanistan, and received the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery.
When he left the military he moved into the world of celebrity protection. Among those he has acted as a bodyguard for are Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn, Kate Moss, Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. There’s one celebrity couple, though, for whom he was more like a member of the fami ly. For 17 months he worked as Brad
Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s head of security, given special responsibility for their children.
‘I’d been moonlighting during holidays, helping out a fr iend who was involved with celebrities, when Angel ina got in touch to see if I would look after their kids.’ He did a few jobs with them, and when he quit the Army in 2006 he went to work for them full- time – an experience that eventually led him to quit, cit ing burnout. It’s an extraordinary admission. An elite SAS soldier stepping down from a job looking after the Pitt-Jolie children? ‘I was burnt out,’ he explains. ‘ I’d done it for 17 months. I needed a change. I very rarely had time off. The job was fantastic but it was too much.’
The world he describes is anything but normal. Would he say they were an ordinary family? ‘Ordinary? Well, they’re ordinary in the world they live in which is not quite like ours. It’s a world where it’s normal to have three different nannies, a bunch of security people. But to the kids it’s normal. This is natural to them.’
His job involved being at the children’s side wherever the family were in the world, keeping them safe. ‘I was the closest person to them. They were very reluctant to allow people too close to the kids.’ Obviously with four children (the twins Knox and Vivienne weren’t born until 2008), it was a full- on job. ‘I had support when the kids went to school or at a venue, there was anything from three to four nannies. It was chaotic, but in a fun way. Brad and Angelina always arranged things for the children to do, so maybe I’d have to take Maddox, Zahara and Pax to the cinema, or Shiloh and Pax would have a clown come in to entertain them.’
Not that Brad and Angelina were distant figures, he says. ‘The thing about them is that they are phenomenal masters of time. I used to watch them work 18 hours a day, on a film set or doing charity stuff, but they always made a point of setting aside time for the children. It’s not ideal, but that’s the lifestyle. They’d laugh and play silly games with the kids, like anyone. I’d say they were as normal a family as you could be in those circumstances.’
He hadn’t been in touch with the couple for years when he heard of their split. ‘I’m never surprised by what happens in Hollywood. More saddened. They really were in love at the time I was with them,’ he says.
It’s been alleged Brad was verbally abusive towards one of his children, though this was denied. Did Billy see any evidence of such behaviour? ‘Not at all. I saw a good dad. I was surprised at how great he was. Little Pax was a hard nut, a terror to control, but Brad loved it. He really spent time with him trying to bring him round, discipline him – in a beautiful way. I never saw anything untoward.’
Billy isn’t the only one on the SAS show to have a fascinating back story. Some of the contestants themselves have had lives that couldn’t have been scripted, from the former soldier whose gambling and alcohol addictions landed him in prison to a man whose son was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. And for whoever comes out on top over the five gruelling episodes, a career in Hollywood protection may well beckon.
SAS: Who Dares Wins, Monday, 9pm, Channel 4.