Jenny Cooney Carillo
In her first interview since the birth of her twins, Angelina Jolie talks to Jenny Cooney Carrillo about motherhood, her big, loud, busy family – and sharing a bath with Brad.
Softly spoken Angelina Jolie appears suddenly in the hotel suite at New York’s Waldorf Astoria by way of the kitchen, while I’m waiting at the entrance to the room. When I apologise for not knowing she’d arrived through the back door she chuckles and says, “I tend to do that a lot.”
Dressed exquisitely in a beige silk V-neck jumper by Jenni Kayne, cream wool-cashmere Ralph Lauren trousers and Stuart Weitzman nude patent shoes, she looks stunning. She doesn’t appear too skinny or depressed or in therapy for post-natal crazy thoughts, as an American tabloid cover story claims. Instead, her look is as understated as ever, with her only accessories Tiffany earrings and rings and a Bulgari gold watch. “Yeah somebody told me I was depressed,” she laughs. One look at her today dismisses that speculation anyway.
“My life is being with my family and my family is so real and so close and so happy I really don’t care about anything else,” Angelina says in response to the publicity that surrounds her, partner Brad Pitt and their six children. “It’s been years of people talking about me and now I tend to ignore it and hope most people know those things are completely made up and nonsense.”
But while such an attitude is achievable for her, it’s going to prove more difficult for children Maddox, seven, four-year-old Pax, Zahara, three, Shiloh, two, and three month-old twins Vivienne and Knox.
“We are worried about the kids getting hold of the internet and seeing some things so we’ll talk to them early on about this stuff, but it’s a hard thing to explain because it makes no sense.”
Such frankness is refreshing, as is the fact her exclusive interview with Grazia is a no questions barred affair – a rarity for a Hollywood actress these days.
The family have spent most of their time lately at a rented chateau in the south of France near Nice, but are now dividing their time between a base in Berlin, while Brad shoots his latest movie, and New Orleans, where they have a home. Angelina hasn’t worked for almost a year while she takes care of the children. However, Brad’s taken a break from filming Inglorious Bastards with Quentin Tarantino so he can accompany Angelina to New York and help her with the kids while it’s her turn to work – promoting her new film, Changeling.
“This morning we all had jetlag and about 4.30 in the morning, everybody started to wake up and Brad took them for me,” she says. “He said, ‘You’ve got to work so I’ll take it on’ and he went out and I just heard chaos in the living room for the next four hours while I tried to sleep but kept wondering what was happening.
“He’s an amazing father and a very dedicated father,” she continues with admiration. “It’s chaos, but the kids are really forming beautiful friendships and they’re team-mates and very loving to the babies. A lot of that has to do with the fact I’m not working right now and we’ve had the kids home-schooled so we are all together all the time.
“I think the trick to having six is that once you pass like three or four, it’s so crazy anyway that it’s just more chaos so it’s all OK,” Angelina laughs. So, I venture to ask, you’re not done yet? “No,” she firmly replies, then laughs as she rolls her eyes in mock-horror.
Angelina has been previously married twice, to actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, and Brad, of course, was married to Friends star Jennifer Aniston before the pair met on the set of their film Mr. & Mrs. Smith and eventually became a couple.
They recently donated $100,000 to defeat a proposed ban on gay marriage in the upcoming California election, but ask the politically active and outspoken star if they will finally tie the knot themselves, and she cryptically responds with a laugh, “ask Brad” and won’t elaborate.
Yet one thing is for sure, the woman confidently sitting in this hotel room opening up about pretty much everything going on in her life and career hasn’t changed much from our early interviews when she was starting out, except she’s now more of a prisoner to her fame. Yet even that isn’t something she complains about...
Buy Grazia magazine, on sale now, for the full story.
