Angelina Jolie says stress from divorce led to Bell’s palsy
Angelina Jolie is speaking candidly about her stressful divorce and “shallow” Hollywood.
While filming “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” in 2018, the actor said she noticed her voice had changed register since she’d filmed the first installment years prior.
“My body reacts very strongly to stress,” she told WSJ Magazine in an interview. “My blood sugar goes up and down I suddenly had Bell’s palsy six months before my divorce.”
Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt in 2016 after two years of marriage, but more than a decade as a couple. The split was messy, with stories circulating about Pitt’s alleged drunken rampage on a private jet and backand-forth legal battles over custody of their six children.
Pitt was investigated by the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services and the FBI and later cleared by both.
The pair agreed to settle their divorce privately but have battled in court over the partial sale of their Château Miraval property and winery in Provence, trading slights in filings available publicly. Suffice it to say, the “Girl, Interrupted” star has been stressed, and hiding away has been a major reprieve.
“There’s a reason people who have been through hardship are also much more honest and much more connected, and I am more relaxed with them,” Jolie told the outlet about what she gets from her activism work.
“Why do I like spending time with people who’ve survived and are refugees? They’ve confronted so much in life that it brings forward not just strength, but humanity.” The actor said that in Hollywood, she doesn’t have much of a social life, isn’t dating and her closest friends are refugees. “Because I grew up around Hollywood, I was never very impressed with it,” Jolie continued. “I never bought into it as significant or important.”
The daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, Jolie landed her first film role at 7, playing the daughter of her real-life dad’s character in the 1982 comedy “Lookin’ to Get Out.” As a teenager, she modeled and studied Method acting before hitting it big in her early 20s when she starred in “Girl, Interrupted” and won an Oscar for her performance.
The “Eternals” actor noted that Hollywood is a “shallow place” that doesn’t suit her anymore, and after her divorce, the actor said she lost her ability to live and travel freely. Jolie plans to move and looks forward to spending more time at her home in Cambodia.
“Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place,” she continued. “So you seek authenticity.”
In September, ahead of the launch of her fashion line, Atelier Jolie, (an endeavor that will marry her socially conscious values with her affinity for fashion) the actor reflected on who she used to be, and teased that the darker parts of herself may get a comeback.
“I was quite dark when I was young,” she told Vogue. “I was a punk ... going to thrift stores, cutting things up, burning little teeny cigarette holes into things: That was me as a teenager, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Maybe that part of me wants to push back.”