Wife From Hell
UNSTABLE, VICIOUS & MANIPULATIVE: DIVORCE EXPOSES ANGELINA’S SECRETS
• Physically attacked Brad during jealous rages
• Locked herself in bedroom for days
• How she set him up & what really happened on the plane
• Brad’s secret weapon: her psych records
A marriage filled with violence, drugs and cheating charges. Behind their image as the perfect couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were locked in a volatile and miserable life together. Now In Touch, the magazine that broke the news of their divorce, takes you inside their house of horrors with exclusive details about the marriage and ugly breakup
He couldn’t believe what was happening. Brad Pitt was all alone in his 5,300-square-foot mansion in LA the weekend of Sept. 17 when the Department of Children and Family Services showed up at his door. DCFS had received a disturbing anonymous call alleging that a drunken Brad had gotten physical with his eldest sons on a flight from France to LA as the plane stopped to refuel at Minnesota’s Falls International Airport on Sept. 14. “Brad admitted to being drunk and losing his temper, but that’s it. He even took a urine drug test on the spot,” a source with knowledge of the investigation exclusively tells In Touch. Brad’s wife, Angelina Jolie, wasn’t at the house because she had taken Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 8, and moved them away from their father and into a nearby rental property with her. But during his intense interview with DCFS, Brad made it clear he is no abuser. “He said he was attempting to discipline the kids on the plane, and Angie ignored him, as usual, when he asked for help,” explains a Brad insider. His attempt to control the kids turned into an ugly scene but there were no punches thrown. The source with knowledge of the investigation adds that Brad “was extremely remorseful about the entire situation.”
He was also devastated — and blindsided — by what Angelina did next. On Sept. 19, the Monday after DCFS descended upon his home, she shocked Brad by filing for divorce. And she didn’t stop there: Angelina also demanded sole physical custody of their six children with mere visitation for their father, saying in a statement through her entertainment attorney, Robert Offer, that “this decision was made for the health of the family.” Then it was leaked that Brad allegedly has a drug and alcohol problem. Insiders tell In Touch that people close to Ange- lina put that information out there. Brad’s convinced that someone close to Angelina called DCFS; after all, the incident happened in Minnesota but California DCFS was alerted immediately. It was a move that shocked the world — Angelina aggressively trying to destroy Brad and paint him as unfit to have shared physical custody of their children. One source tells In Touch she set him up and was simply waiting for an incident before she moved out: She already had a rental house ready, filed divorce papers without telling him and then released a statement on her own. But she may soon regret her harsh tactics. A sad and seething Brad is determined to fight back. Because she is painting him as an unfit parent, Brad is ready to expose her darkest secrets. He’s set to prove how she got violent with him throughout their relationship, that she locked herself in a bedroom for days at a time and how he believes she cheated on him, with men and women, In Touch has exclusively learned. And he has a secret weapon: He’ll subpoena her medical records to prove that she suffers from an unreported secret mental health disorder. “He has so much ammunition,” says the Brad insider. “Angie thrives on chaos and drama. She is a complete nightmare.”
Their shattered relationship came to a head on that fateful flight. “It was during the descent into the Minnesota airport that all hell broke loose,” explains
the Brad insider. “Brad told Pax to sit down and Pax told his dad to ‘shut the f--- up,’ causing Brad to get out of his seat and get in Pax’s face and tell him to ‘f---ing sit down now.’ Maddox then got in the middle of it and Angie started screaming hysterically.”
Airport employees knew something was very wrong. “Workers on the tarmac could hear Brad and Angelina yelling from inside the plane before they even got off,” a source whose friend works at the tiny airfield tells In Touch. (The source originally spoke with mytalk 107.1.’s Colleen and Bradley in Minneapolis.) “My friend told me Brad was seriously drunk. He got out of the plane, he peed on the side of a build-
ing and then got into a co-worker’s truck.” When Brad got off the plane, a second source recalls, he hit his face on the truck. “It didn’t faze him. He just kind of shrugged it off.” After the refueling was complete, Brad and the rest of the family climbed back on the plane and took off for LA.
The next day, Angelina moved out. But DCFS contacted her as well. In Touch has exclusively learned that Angelina, the family’s four nannies and the kids were interviewed by DCFS after the melee. (They were all interviewed individually.) “Angie said Brad loses his temper with the kids a lot and that there is drinking and drug use,” explains the source with knowledge of the investigation,
adding that unlike Brad, 52 — who wasn’t permitted to see his children during the early days of the DCFS inquiry — Angie, 41, was not asked to submit to drug testing. “The younger kids — Zahara, Shiloh and the twins — all told DCFS they missed their dad. Maddox and Pax didn’t express that sentiment and seem to think they are tasked with being their mother’s protector. It’s very unhealthy. Brad is terrified that she’s going to turn the kids against him next, and it’s tearing him apart.”
The DCFS investigation is expected to remain open for months as Angelina continues to try to destroy Brad. “He is seeing a disturbing pattern with Angie and the
approach she is taking in this custody battle,” says the Brad insider. “She was diagnosed with a mental health disorder in 2000 when she voluntarily had herself committed to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute — she’d had a breakdown before she married Billy Bob Thornton. Refusing to believe the diagnosis, Angie never took the recommendations or the meds that were prescribed to her once she was discharged.” If she continues to be vicious and manipulative and to force Brad into a custody war, In Touch has exclusively learned, he will “immediately subpoena Angie’s medical records from her psychiatric stay at UCLA because it will go straight to Brad’s claim that she is unstable and shouldn’t be granted sole custody of the kids.”
Angelina should be afraid. Before she reinvented herself as a global humanitarian and U.N. ambassador, she was famous for her wild-child behavior. She’d made headlines for everything from cutting herself, collecting knives and using heroin to dating women, kissing brother James Haven on the lips and wearing second husband Billy Bob’s blood in a vial around her neck. More unusual behavior continued during her 12-year relationship with Brad. “There were days at a time where Angie would just lock herself in her bedroom and not come out,” says the Brad insider. “Brad tried for years to save Angie, always hoping she would get the help she needed, but it never happened.” In 2014, adds an insider who’s known them for years, “Angelina wasn’t getting out of bed, would have crying fits that lasted for days and lost a significant amount of weight. She gave up on her marriage. She asked Brad for a divorce. She wanted to be alone.” But Brad, says the insider, fought to keep going.
Angelina also had a violent streak. “During the marriage, there were multiple incidents in which she and Brad had screaming matches and Angie would physically push him,” says the Brad insider. “Angie would tell Brad to push her back, but he refused.” (Brad raised eyebrows when he stepped out in April 2015 with an abrasion on his face; he blamed it on tripping over his flip-flop weeks after Angelina had an elective hysterectomy following her BRCA1 cancer gene diagnosis.)
Cheating charges have also long plagued the former couple. Angie — who fell in love with Brad on the 2004 set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith while he was still married to Jennifer Aniston — “never trusted Brad during the marriage and was always accusing him of cheating,” says the Brad insider, adding that Angelina’s history of “getting romantically involved with men who were either married or in relationships” influenced her suspicions. Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard, 40, who plays Brad’s wife in the upcoming World War II spy thriller Allied, found herself dragged into the marriage drama as she filmed with Brad last spring. “After they married, Brad and Angelina had a rule that neither would passionately kiss another co-star on-screen,” explains a second Brad insider. “After Angie read a copy of Brad’s Allied script — which includes kissing — she went absolutely nuts.” But Brad did it because at this point he was disgusted with Angelina’s vicious behavior and hated working with her on their movie
By the Sea, where they, fittingly, played a couple in a bad marriage.
Angelina and Brad argued mercilessly after she learned about his sexually charged scenes with his beautiful French co-star. “An- gelina was very jealous,” says a source who knows them, “and thought Brad was infatuated with Marion because he would talk so highly of her.” (As she’s aged, Angelina’s confidence has taken a hit, explains the second Brad insider: “She’s obsessed with staying young and has doctors visit her at home for Botox and other fillers.”) Angelina got so worked up over Marion, adds the source who knows them, she “hired a private investigator to trail Brad because she was suspicious that he was cheating and partying too much while filming.” Brad was appalled when he found out. “Brad lashed back at Angelina, telling her he was done with her insecurities and fits of jealousy,” a friend told In Touch in August. “He said she was suffocating him.” (Marion, who conceived her second child during production, released a statement slamming reports she and Brad had an affair and confirming her unborn baby’s father is director and writer Guillaume Canet, her partner of
nine years.)
But Brad’s also harbored fears that Angelina has strayed and betrayed him. “He’s believed for years that Angie was unfaithful during the relationship and marriage, with both men and women,” says the first Brad insider, “but he never wanted to know the truth.” They both lost faith over the course of the relationship. “Angie and Brad didn’t have any trust in each other any longer,” says the insider. “It was really sad. She had become hell to live with.”
Their problems started years ago. “Angelina didn’t want Brad drinking and smoking pot all night long and would lock him out of the
house,” says the insider who’s known them for years. They argued about everything. “I remember Angelina having a tantrum, fighting with Brad in a van, screaming at him for getting caught smoking when he was supposed to have quit,” says a source who saw them in Hungary in 2011 when Brad was there working on World War Z. “Brad was shrugging it off and laughing and Angelina was so tense, biting her lips. There was so much tension between them then.”
Things only got worse. A source who worked on Maleficent with Angelina in 2012 says there were also hints of trouble when Brad would visit the set with their children. “She was obsessed with the kids and the movie and didn’t pay much attention to Brad,” the Maleficent source recalls. “The spark between them had disappeared, even back then.” They also seemed like very different people. “She’s a total perfectionist and the kind of person who can’t keep still, whereas Brad is very chill. She’d get frustrated at his laid-backness.”
But Brad was growing increasingly frustrated with Angelina’s permissiveness when it came to parenting their large brood. Early on, says a former teacher, “both Brad and Angelina were very lax in their parenting skills and never held the kids accountable. The kids screamed at each other, at their parents and at the house staff. There was no discipline. The kids did whatever they wanted.” But as the kids got older — and more aggressive, disrespectful and defiant — Brad repeatedly tried to put his foot down, only to be undermined by his wife. “Disciplining the kids became a huge issue. It’s been a constant battle of good cop/ bad cop, and the kids would pick up on the tension,” says the first Brad insider. “If Brad had sent one of the kids to their room for disobeying, Angie would always relent and let them come out. This would lead to knock-down, drag-out screaming matches between Brad and Angie.”
Staffers have struggled to deal with the pandemonium that permeates every home or hotel the family inhabits. “I know that there were nannies who quit within days of meeting the kids,” says the former teacher. A source close to the staff adds that “over time, it’s developed into a house of horrors.” Food and water fights and soccer games in the house have become the norm, says the source close to the staff, adding, “The kids have also delighted in letting loose their collection of animals — a number of dogs, cats, hamsters and snakes — all at once to terrorize the nannies and household staff.” Plus, says that source, “There’s never been a set
bedtime, and the kids have always been allowed to binge-watch cable movies and DVDS until sunrise if they want.” Admits the source, “It’s a total s--- show of absolute chaos. The kids literally run the asylum.”
That friction alone can destroy a marriage. “When a couple can’t agree on ways of parenting, it often leads to divorce,” explains Beverly Hills psychologist Julie Armstrong, who hasn’t counseled the A-listers. “It becomes a bone of contention and a point of real abrasion in the relationship because the kids are so much a part of everyday life. It’s a big issue and it interferes in the household, with communication and intimacy between the couple and ultimately it can drive a couple apart.” The parents have to agree on a strategy. “One parent can have stronger beliefs than the other about discipline — one can be looser, one can be stronger,” adds Dr. Armstrong. “But what’s important is that the parents are consistent about the issue.”
That was never going to happen. Tired of fighting with Angelina and overwhelmed by the kids’ behavioral issues, Brad self-medicated with booze and pot ( he has a medical marijuana card in California, where marijuana is legal). “He’s told friends that he began drinking more over the past two years because there was just so much chaos in the house. Angie was ignoring him completely, and any time he’d try to discipline the kids or set ground rules, she overruled him,” says the first Brad insider. “He became the bad cop, and the kids knew they could all go to Mom to get what they wanted. He’s led a sad, lonely life because of this. He doesn’t feel he’s had a true partner in the relationship for a very long time.”
He needed an escape.“Brad was watching the kids one night while Angie wasn’t home and he was high as a kite, dancing around in purple underwear and a pink boa,” a source who knows him tells In Touch of an incident that happened in LA in June. “The music was blasting and the kids were running around the house wreaking havoc until they busted into Brad’s secret room where he was hiding out, the place he hides all his drug paraphernalia like his bong, and jumped on him.” And it’s not the first time something like that’s happened, admits the source who knows Brad: “Angie would come home to a house that’s turned upside down, Brad passed out on the couch, with the kids eating junk food for dinner.”
Brad and Angelina have also fought bitterly over establishing a home base. “He told Angie they could no longer wander the world with their kids like nomads,” says the second Brad insider. “She blew a fuse, because nobody tells her what to do. She prides herself on being a free spirit, a citizen of the world and wants that for her kids as well. The idea of settling down in one place is the last thing she wants to do.” Ex- plains the insider: “Brad wants the kids to stop being homeschooled and enroll in a regular school. But Angie is absolutely fighting this.”
Brad is now insisting she stop taking the children to dangerous countries, creating photo ops for her U.N. work. “In the past, Angelina has taken the kids on humanitarian trips abroad to dangerous countries including Lebanon and Turkey, which just makes Brad see red. He thinks it’s reckless for Angie to take the kids on these trips because there is so much danger involved,” explains the first Brad insider. “But Angie believes it’s important for the kids to see what is going on in the world, not just see it on the news, and says there is extra security provided on her U.N. trips.” Ultimately, adds the insider, “It’s just another example of how very different they are as individuals and parents.”
Angie never wanted to get married. “She only did it because it was important to the kids,” says the insider. (The pair tied the knot at their sprawling
estate in France, Château Miraval, in August 2014.) “She thought once they finally did it, the arguing would stop. Instead, it only escalated.” Adds a Brad and Angie insider: “Their romance and love for each other died soon after they said ‘I do.’” Instead of taking a honeymoon, they jumped right into filming By the Sea, an emotionally fraught drama about a failing marriage. Brad later called the decision “dysfunctional,” and Angelina’s admitted the crew “felt like they were living in a house where the parents were fighting and you don’t know where to stand or where to look.” The film, which Angelina also wrote and directed, was a critical and box office flop. Behind the scenes, “Angie was relentless and cruel, berating Brad about his acting and fighting with him at every turn,” says an industry source. (A local told In Touch at the time that the kids, who stayed in a separate villa from their parents and were under the care of four teachers and three nannies, were “bored and restless and had no schedule,” which made things even more uncomfortable for the newlyweds.) “During reshoots,” adds the industry source, “Brad seemed very depressed and was drinking a lot. He would do anything to get away from Angie.”
The epic fights even became public. Just hours before the November 2014 premiere of another one of Angelina’s directorial flops, Unbroken, she and Brad were photographed arguing ferociously on the balcony of their Sydney hotel. “Angelina’s controlling behavior became too much for Brad to handle,” says another industry insider. “While Brad was filming [in the spring of 2015], he told pals on set that he dreaded going home to his ‘nagging’ wife.” He felt bullied, suffocated and, adds the second industry insider, at one point “told her that despite her beauty she was ugly on the inside.”
It was all coming to a head. “They’ve essentially been living apart for the past year and if they didn’t have kids together, Angie would have dumped Brad years ago,” says the first Brad insider. They’ve been on increasingly different career paths as well. Angelina’s been pulling back from Hollywood and instead focusing on her work with the U.N. “Angie has always had political aspirations. She wants to make that her career,” explains an industry source. All the while, Brad’s been “consumed with art, architecture, real estate, film production, wine-making and more,” says their friend, who notes he currently has 37 films in the hopper as either an actor or producer. “Brad wanted to divorce Angelina a year ago,” says the first Brad insider, “but he tried to make things work for the sake of the kids.”
Now he’s afraid he’ll lose them forever if Angelina gets her way. “She wants the legal capacity to decide where the kids go without Brad’s approval,” says the insider. “She says she will do whatever it takes to protect her children.”
But her chances of getting sole physical custody hinge on her proving that Brad is an unfit parent. If the DCFS investigation clears him, “She would have to prove that he’s an absentee father and really isn’t around and that she’s the one doing all the various daily grind and dayto-day stuff with the kids,” explains Goldie Schon, a family law attorney in LA who doesn’t represent the Jolie-pitts. “She has to prove that when he is with the children, he’s placing them in danger or isn’t able to take care of them, or when he’s not with the children, that he’s placing himself in danger. And if she can’t prove that to a judge — whether it’s through a private investigator, videos, pictures, other people who are around him standing up and being a witness for her — her chances are slim.”
Multiple insiders say it’s unlikely Brad will ultimately be branded an abuser. “There will likely be no finding of abuse, either physical or emotional. Parents lose their tempers with kids all the time,” explains the source with knowledge of the DCFS investigation. “But the issue of substance abuse is going to be carefully scrutinized,” even though Brad told investigators he
has a medical marijuana card. Still, adds that source, “It’s highly probable that Brad will soon be allowed to see the kids.”
He has a lot of support. First, Brad’s family in Missouri is prepared to testify that Angelina is “mentally unstable,” says the first Brad insider. Then there’s his ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston. “She instructed one of her advisors to reach out to Brad and to let him know she would be more than willing to submit a declaration stating he was never physically or
emotionally abusive toward her during their marriage,” says the Brad insider (see sidebar, page 30). “Furthermore, she never witnessed Brad lose his temper with any of his nieces or nephews, nor the kids of their friends. Brad was extremely touched by her gesture.” His old pal Gwen Stefani has also offered to help. “Gwen’s shocked by the allegations and absolutely doesn’t believe it,” says the second Brad insider. “Gwen’s kids are close in age to Shiloh and the twins, and they’ve had playdates over the years. Brad has always been a loving father.”
Angie’s not backing down — and neither is Brad. “He isn’t going to be railroaded by Angie’s smear campaign against him,” says the insider. “He hasn’t led the perfect life, but Angie’s no saint, either.” If she doesn’t relent and drop her fight for sole physical custody, the already devastating divorce will get even nastier. “Both of them,” says the second Brad insider, “are ready to go to war.” ◼