The last six years have not been easy on Angelina Jolie.
There was the altercation her ex, Brad Pitt, had with their son. There was the divorce.
There was a pre-emptive mastectomy, too. And on top of all of that, she’s raising six kids — primarily on her own.
In a moving interview with Harper’s Bazaar , she opened up about all of those obstacles, and how she’s started to overcome them.
Angelina and Brad were together for 11 years.
During that time, Brad adopted Angelina’s children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara. They also had three more children together: Shiloh, Vivienne, and Knox.
In 2016, Brad and Maddox, Angelina’s eldest, allegedly got into an altercation aboard a private plane.
The FBI and Child Protective Services opened an investigation into the incident.
During a flight from Nice, France to LA, an argument between Angelina, Brad, and Maddox resulted in the authorities being called.
The FBI and CPS investigated the incident, and Brad was cleared of all allegations. The details surrounding what happened on the flight are still unknown.
Angelina stayed away from acting for three years.
After separating from Brad in 2016, Angelina chose to head behind the camera. She directed three films from 2016-2019.
She finally returned to the screen in the sequel to Maleficent in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.
Freedom is a huge theme for her.
From the tattoo she got when she was 20 that reads, “A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages,” to how she raises her children, freedom is a key component of how she lives her life.
“[…] the wild within me is alright and a part of me.”
It’s pretty clear that she shut down a part of herself for a long time.
The way she spoke about her journey back to herself was full of honesty and openness.
“The part of us that is free, wild, open, curious can get shut down by life. By pain or by harm.”
The last few years have taken a massive toll.
“My body has been through a lot over the past decade, particularly the past four years, and I have both the visible and invisible scars to show for it.”
Between her divorce and her time in the director’s chair, she found time to heal.
Now, she’s finding her way back.
“Life takes many turns. Sometimes you get hurt, you see those you love in pain, and you can’t be as free and open as your spirit desires. It’s not new or old, but I do feel the blood returning to my body.”
She credited her kids with helping her find herself again.
She said they are the only people who truly know who she is.
“As parents, we encourage our kids to embrace all that they are, and all that they know in their hearts to be right, and they look back at us and want the same for us.”
Every opportunity she had to speak on her own struggle, she used to speak about someone else’s.
While the interviewer gently probed for her thoughts on her life — from feeling restricted to sexist labels — Angelina was ready to discuss broader topics.
Her own problems were small in comparison to the people she’s met around the world.
Basically, she was not interested in talking about herself.
“[…] as I traveled in my early 20s, my awakening was realizing the freedoms I had in comparison to many people around the world.”
She saw her own privilege, and decided to use it to help others. We. Stan .
However…
When asked what societal limits she and her family have been up against, Angelina decided to reference Brad.
She did it in a very diplomatic way (it’s her, after all), but the thinly veiled shade was definitely present.
For now, she’s not able to take her children as many places as she’d like.
“I would love to live abroad and will do so as soon as my children are 18. Right now I’m having to base where their father chooses to live.”
Clearly, their custody agreement is getting in the way.
Despite the shady honesty, she also had some important words for 2020:
“This is a time to fight. If there is a fight in this life, it must be for freedoms and rights. And if we have our freedom, we must fight for others who don’t.”
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For her, the future is for helping others.
She spoke passionately about helping women trapped in abusive homes around the world, as well as giving refugees aid.
“None of this is just ‘the way the world is.’ It is something monstrously out of balance. And our response can’t be to shrug or to think only about our own countries, because we are all connected.”
There’s a reason she’s an UN Ambassador for Refugees.
She’s ready to stand up, lift up voices of those who have been silenced, and fight for what she thinks is right. Or, as she put it:
“If nobody ever rebelled, nothing would ever change.”