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Angelina Jolie makes cutting remark about her children's estrangement from Brad Pitt
Alexandra B.
Despite Hollywood royalty Angelina Jolie respectfully remaining very quiet about her children’s relationship with their father, Brad Pitt.
In a recent interview with Variety, the 51-year-old star of Maleficent revealed that she is glad her children “still like” and want to be around her, suggesting that they do not feel the same way about their double Oscar-winning dad.
Brangelina, as they were known once the couple got together during filming Mr and Mrs Smith in 2004, share six children, Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 17.
Jolie spends much more time with her children than Pitt
Speaking about her close relationship with her children, Jolie told the glamorous magazine: "They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot.
"I think they're very encouraging of me, kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn't felt as free to do."
Implying that she bore the brunt of childcare since her 2016 divorce from Pitt, Jolie explained that she has not been able to live away from Los Angeles as she has had to look after the children.
She told The Hollywood Reporter, "I am here because I have to be here from a divorce, but as soon as [Vivienne and Knox are] 18, I'll be able to leave."
Jolie added, "I have a house now to raise my children, but sometimes this place can be…that humanity that I found across the world is not what I grew up with here."
While the family has been rather private about their estrangement from Pitt, most of the six children have made their distance from their father clear by dropping his name.
Most of Pitt's children no longer use his name
In May 2024, when Shiloh, the former couple’s eldest biological child, turned 18, she filed paperwork to legally drop Pitt from her double-barreled surname, making her just Shiloh Jolie.
Her name change was made official a few months later, eight years after Angelina filed for divorce from Brad.
Since then, some of her five siblings have followed suit.
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Brangelina’s eldest child, 24-year-old Maddox, adopted from Cambodia by Jolie before she met Pitt, has also ditched his dad’s name.
In the credits of Couture, Angelina’s 2025 movie that he worked on as an assistant director, he is named as Maddox Jolie.
In another blow to the absent father, one of the former couple’s youngest children, 17-year-old Vivienne, also uses just her mom’s last name as she follows her parents and siblings into the industry.
She was listed as Vivienne Jolie in the playbill of The Outsiders as a production assistant in the Broadway musical.