Angelina the Restless Saint
News that Angelina Jolie is divorcing Brad Pitt surprised many, yet it follows a pattern in her troubled life, says her biographer
Long before the curious creature called Brangelina came into being, and long before Angelina Jolie became a charity saint, working mother to six children, film director, Oscar-winning actress and global force of nature, there was a mixed-up kid who smoked heroin in rented hotel rooms and idly dreamed of meeting the actor Brad Pitt. A former friend of the time told me: “She never took any notice of the Hollywood scene, so her interest in Brad was unusual.”
Unusual, but not out of reach. But she could never have predicted the effect that their meeting would eventually have. Their first encounter on the set of
Mr and Mrs Smith in 2003 is now part of Hollywood folklore. Director Doug Limon saw the chemistry between them and knew he had captured lightning in a bottle. Brad’s marriage to Jennifer Aniston broke down soon afterwards.
Very quickly, the new couple were making their mark not just as actors, but as activists. They appeared in lock-step as a pair out to make a real difference – captivating ringmasters who juggled a circus of six children, charity work and movies. Brangelina were a Hollywood success story.
Little wonder, then, that the news last week that Angelina was filing for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, caused genuine shock. At a stroke, the couple knocked the UN and Syria off the front pages. BBC Radio 4 presenter Eddie Mair interrupted his PM broadcast to bring listeners the exclusive of Jennifer’s reaction – the sound of a woman hysterically laughing. Even Brad Pitt’s good friend, George Clooney, was visibly surprised when he was told of their split.
The rumour mill went into overdrive; first came the unfounded accusations that Brad was having an affair with his
Allied leading lady, Marion Cotillard. Then claims of drinking, pot smoking and bad parenting skills – with reports of him being investigated by the police after becoming “verbally abusive and physical with his children” on a plane.
Sides were quickly taken and camps established – with sources saying allegations against the 52-year-old actor were “exaggerated and fabricated” and that he was “furious” with his wife for “unleashing hell” on the family. Others claimed it was a deliberately aggressive move by Angelina to hire divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who, fresh from representing Johnny Depp in his split from Amber Heard, had seemingly learnt the lesson of striking first.
The stark facts are that Angie, now 41, has now chalked up three failed marriages – English actor Jonny Lee Miller and Fargo star Billy Bob Thornton were her previous partners. Each time the marriage ended, the response from the ousted spouse has been the same: utter bewilderment. Thornton, who got his marching orders in 2002, described it as a “bolt out of the blue”. Officially, the reason was that he was drinking and unfaithful, which he hotly denied.
While researching my biography of Angelina, I got to know some of her family and close friends very well. At the time, they sincerely hoped that Pitt was not simply another notch on her belt. They saw the decision to adopt a rainbow nation of children (Pax, 12, from Vietnam; Zahara, 11, from Ethiopia; plus Angie’s existing child, Maddox, 15, from Cambodia) and have biological children (Shiloh, 11, and twins Vivienne and Knox, now eight) as a clear commitment to family life.
As a free-spirited woman, Angelina had constructed a gilded cage for herself. She had deliberately surrounded herself with a vulnerable, needy family and a laid-back partner who seemed to share this brave, if not, crazy journey of juggling multiple careers, charities and children.
Yet Pitt was an odd choice for Angelina. There was nothing brooding, dark or wildly artistic about this corn-fed boy from the Midwest who preferred Bud Lite to blood vials. Sure, he smoked weed and went for nighttime motorbike rides, but he came from a solid churchgoing family. His parents, Bill and Jane, a professional family counsellor, have been married for more than 50 years.
By contrast, Angie was raised in a family where the women wore the trousers and the men fell in line. She idolised her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, a struggling actress, but loathed her father, Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight. He earned her undying curse for walking out on the family after a brief affair when she was still a baby. While Jon’s behaviour did not warrant a lifetime’s obloquy, Marche would never forgive him. On her deathbed, her last words were: “Don’t let Jon in the room.”
This inability to forgive, this lack of compassion and perspective, is known as “the Bertrand freeze” – a quality Angie has in full measure, once severely restricting, for example, her father’s time with his grandchildren.
While her mother presented a saintly, compassionate image, the sad truth is that when she died, she had fallen out with most of her friends and family, including her father, sister, brother and others, often for the most trivial of reasons. While both Angie and her brother James have waxed lyrical about their mother’s marvellous home cooking, in reality, the kids lived on takeaways and she was rarely at home – often flying somewhere for work or her love life, dating Burt Reynolds, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino, among others. The children were raised by an assortment of friends and out-of-work actors who doubled up as nannies. When Marche was around, she set few boundaries for her children.
It feels like a familiar pattern is emerging. As Angelina races restlessly around the globe, filming, lecturing and visiting war-torn nations – being appointed a special envoy for the UNHCR in 2012 – she repeats the mantra of the importance of family life. Yet she often leaves her own children in the charge of nannies – there are said to be six, one for each child. One recently broke ranks to tell tales of domestic anarchy chez Brangelina, where few rules were ever imposed. Even Brad once compared the family atmosphere to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
It is the Pitt side of the family, particularly grandmother Jane, which has tried to provide for the children. For much of the time, Brad has been the creative and emotional foil to his driven wife. Blessed with a stable family life, for many years he tried to be a peacemaker between Angie and her father. He was the one who supported an inconsolable Angie after the death of her mother in January 2007 and cherished her when she underwent a voluntary double mastectomy in February 2013, then had her ovaries removed a few months after their 2014 wedding.
But hand-in-hand with the Bertrand freeze is the Bertrand curse. Her mother’s side of the family have passed down the damaged BRCA-1 gene, which causes breast and ovarian cancer. Claiming the life of her mother aunt, uncle and grandparents, it has cast a long shadow over her life. She responded, consciously and unconsciously, by living and partying hard and fast. It was no coincidence that her first script, which she wrote at 20, was called Skin and concerned the dilemma facing a young woman who had the damaged BRCA-l gene. “It was very dark,” recalls a friend.
To those close to the couple, Brad was seen as her best bet of achieving peace. No longer. Those who know her believe that, in the public relations battle to come, she will remain silently above the fray, a goddess calmly looking down on the folly of her former husband. Bad Brad versus Saint Angelina, a generational rematch between her own parents.
Undoubtedly, she will now throw herself into her work – in Hollywood and around the globe, visiting refugee camps and worthy conferences with the great and the good. Angelina has spent much of her adult life trying to save the world. It remains to be seen if she can save herself.
Andrew Morton’s Angelina: An Unauthorised Biography is published by St Martin’s Press, New York and is available on Amazon. @andrewmortonUK