ANGELINA’S NEW FAMILY
Theme park fun, African holidays, ‘open’ talks at home—how the star has rebuilt her happy family
Theme-park fun, African holidays, “open” talks—how Angelina Jolie has rebuilt her happy family.
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If her sunny public persona is anything to go by, the Maleficent star seems to have found calm nearly a year on from her shock split with Brad Pitt. “Angelina isn’t thinking about the break-up drama anymore,” a source told ET. “She is over all of that.” She and the kids have
a new Los Angeles home—a $25 million mansion near where Pitt lives in the old family house—and the animosity that defined the early months of the break-up has been replaced by a negotiated harmony. Said the source, “She’s focusing on putting this all behind her and getting back to work.”
Ten months on, it’s a far cry from where they were when Jolie, 42, suddenly called it quits after the fateful night on their private plane last September, which led to Pitt, 53, being investigated and cleared by the FBI after an alleged incident involving Maddox. But although a peace has been brokered, sources have now claimed to Us Weekly that while the assumption has been that the final in-flight fight pushed Jolie to file for divorce, an insider close to Pitt now said she had made up her mind about ending the relationship months earlier. Friends had nudged her, claimed the magazine, to “goad Brad” into an explosive fight “that would ultimately give her leverage in court during a custody battle.” Said the source, “By the end, the kids had all taken sides and were experts at pitting their parents against each other.”
Whatever the truth, Jolie has admitted in the past that inside their private world, everyone is “figuring it out as we go.” The kids “like to mess with me,” she told The Guardian in November 2015. “They like to make fun of me. I’m just … Little Mommy.” And strong, available mommy. She painted an intimate picture of the “great, open communication” she strives to have with her kids: “They’re my favourite friends. They’ve become my best friends. We love sitting up and talking about life.”
Allied star Pitt, meanwhile, has been doing less talking, more thinking. He’s given up booze—he told GQ Style in May that his drinking had “become a problem” but now, after hiring a therapist and sober coach, he’s “really, really happy to be done with all that.” He’s
begun dating (including a reported flirtation with actress Sienna Miller) and now he “sees the kids and talks to Angie as little or as much as she wants,” a source close to the actor told Us Weekly. “He’s not making any demands. He’s just trying to do whatever he can to rebuild his relationship with Angie and his children.”
On June 17, Jolie—in a Burberry trench and long boots—shepherded the kids through LAX en route to Africa on a trip that included a visit to Ethiopia, where Zahara was born and adopted. A UN special envoy, the actress carried out humanitarian work in Kenya, then she and the kids flew for a five-day visit to Namibia, where Shiloh, who was born there, opened a wildlife sanctuary named in her honour. “The name was a surprise to her and she was beaming,” a source tells WHO. “She and her brothers and sisters moved around very quietly as the newly rescued elephants were still settling in.”
Three days after the Disneyland visit, Jolie strolled in the Los Feliz area with Vivienne, her arm draped around her youngest daughter. Viv, in turn, pulled her mum in for a kiss. As to whether anyone else is kissing the star, “Angelina is not dating anybody at the moment,” a source told ET. “She’s enjoying spending time with her children.” And determined to keep an important promise: “We will always be a family,” she said post-split. “We will get through this time and hopefully be a stronger family for it.”