In a new interview with Vogue to promote her upcoming fashion brand, she speaks with love and pride about her children, but also reveals recent years have taken a toll.
The actress and humanitarian spoke about how she has only taken film roles that wouldn’t have required long shoots and excessive time away from her six children in the midst of her split from former husband Brad Pitt.
The former couple, parents to Maddox, 22, Pax, 19, Zahara, 18, Shiloh, 17, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 15, announced they would be divorcing in September 2016 after 12 years together and just two years after they tied the knot in Miraval, France.
“I feel a bit down these days,” the 48-year-old star shared. “I don’t feel like I’ve been myself for a decade, in a way, which I don’t want to get into.”
Since their split, Jolie and Pitt have had a tumultuous journey containing a number of legal battles. While a judge declared Jolie and Pitt legally single in 2019, they have yet to settle their divorce, which the actress initiated in 2016, or a permanent custody agreement. In that time Jolie scaled back her work commitments significantly.
“We had a lot of healing to do,” she said. “We’re still finding our footing.”
She was more upbeat when describing the influence her children have had on her life.
“I was 26 when I became a mother,” Jolie reminisced. “My entire life changed. Having children saved me — and taught me to be in this world differently.
“I think, recently, I would’ve gone under in a much darker way had I not wanted to live for them. They’re better than me, because you want your children to be. Of course I’m the mother, and hopefully that safe place for them and that stability. But I’m also the one that they laugh at — and I see them taking over so many different aspects of our family.”
In the past several years, Jolie has only had leading roles in two movies: 2019’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and 2021’s Those Who Wish Me Dead. She’s had smaller roles in Eternals and Come Away and featured as a voice actor in The One and Only Ivan and Kung Fu Panda 4.
Jolie revealed in the interview that though her children have begun appearing at red carpet appearances alongside her, she doesn’t force any of them to attend or to dress up.
“Nobody has to go anywhere if they don’t want to, and if they don’t want to dress up, they don’t have to,” she said.
“I don’t tell the kids how to dress,” she said. “Even when they were little, I just put things in front of them.” The actress insisted she wants them to “be their own people.”
These days Jolie has a new focus, developing Atelier Jolie, a fashion-focused brand and New York space that brings together some of the focus the star has had in recent years.
Vogue describes Atelier Jolie as a “somewhat broadly defined effort to bring her globally minded, socially conscious values to the world of fashion” and the New York City location she has secured as a space that, “combines tailoring and upcycling services with a gallery space for local artisans and a café run in partnership with refugee organizations.”
