What Really Happened Between Angelina Jolie And Her Father?
Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight have made no secret that their relationship is, at best, complicated. Jolie has had open hostility for her father for years, while Voight has made innumerable public pleas to mend their paternal bond well over a decade. Though they've recently reconciled, if history is to be believed, it may not be for long. Here are all the ins and outs of the pair's complex, sometimes sad, occasionally heartwarming, connection.
He allegedly cheated on her mom, then abandoned the family
Express reported in 2008 that Voight met Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, on a blind date. They wed when Bertrand was 21 and divorced by the time she was 28. "She studied to be an actress but married my father and by 28 was divorced with two kids," Jolie said of her mother, who died of ovarian cancer in 2007. "She gave up her dreams...I am my mother's daughter. My love of children, my values, caring about what goes on in the world, all of that comes from her...I miss her terribly every day. I try to raise my children the way that my mother raised me. I didn't really have a father around."
Added Voight: "I had an affair and there was a divorce. There was a lot of hurt and anger...I used to have a problem with lust but I don't anymore. As I get older, the blood gets tamer."
Was there abuse involved?
Jolie's brother, James Haven, alleged that Voight and Betrand's relationship had more stress and heartbreak than Voight led on. "He put my mom through years of mental abuse," Haven said, according to Express.
A longtime family friend agreed. "Jon Voight was a terrible father to her back then. He cheated on her mother. Marcheline was broken-hearted," the pal dished. "She told me Jon had emotionally abused her. She said he had a thing for a Hollywood starlet. Angelina had a difficult time growing up with what was going on. She has a lot of hostility toward her dad."
Voight denies abuse of any kind, telling Express, "In all truth I tried to give them and their mother continuous love and support...It comes from their inability to let go of years of programmed anger from their mother, who understandably felt quite hurt when we divorced. God knows for years I've tried to mend this relationship. I continuously send them my heart and love and I'm always available to them for whatever they may need from me."
He may not have supported the family financially
Jolie's childhood nanny, Cis Rundle, told the National Enquirer that Voight wasn't just an absentee father, but that he also didn't provide for his two children. "Marcheline told me Jon didn't pay child support," she said. "I think he was a deadbeat dad, but Marcheline wouldn't go after him legally." "I never got paid on time," she added. "I was a single parent raising my son, and it was sometimes a struggle to get lunch money for him."
Rundle says Bertrand somehow managed to make ends meet—with her daughter's help. "She was very careful with her money and managed to keep it all going, and when Angie started getting work, she helped her a lot," she said.
Express reports that in her will, Bertrand listed $2 million along with a note that Voight owed her $180,000 in alimony. Voight denies this, insisting he always gave the family "large sums of money."
She may have had a different father figure growing up
After Voight and Bertrand divorced, Bertrand found love with another Hollywood heavyweight who acted as a paternal figure for Jolie and Haven, Rundle revealed to the National Enquirer. "[Bertrand] had a relationship with Al Pacino," she said. "Angie and James moved to New York near where Al lived." Unfortunately, the romance was short-lived. "Jon went out of his way to ruin that relationship," Rundle said.
However, Andrew Morton's biography Angelina claims that Bertrand's relationship with Pacino was a little more complicated: she initially chose Voight over Pacino because Voight was more successful at the time. When Voight split, she allegedly pursued Pacino again, but he'd already moved on.
She may have exhibited 'daddy issues'
Psychologists who hadn't treated Jolie told Morton in Angelina (via the Daily Beast and the Daily Mail) that her alleged drug abuse (including hard substances like heroin and cocaine), bouts of depression, suicidal thoughts, self-mutilation, kissing her brother on the lips at the 2000 Oscars and becoming sexually active at an early age (as well as her string of failed marriages) may be likely due to her abandonment issues from when Voight left the family.
They had moments of peace
Voight told the Independent that Jolie and Haven joined him at the Oscars in 1986, where he was nominated for his role as a bank robber in Runaway Train. "My name was not announced...[and] my son responded—he just crossed his arms and slunk down in the seat and was really upset that a great injustice had been served! And my daughter to my left put her hand on my arm and said, 'Don't worry Dad, you're wonderful!' It was so sweet."
Jolie also played Voight's daughter in Lookin' To Get Out. "It was a nice little scene," Voight reminisced. "I didn't know that she would go on to be this icon."
As adults, Voight returned the favor: when Jolie starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), he had a small role as Croft's father and the pair had a brief reunion afterward for about a year. Rundle told Radar Online that casting Voight was actually both Bertrand and Jolie's idea. "Angie cast him as her father in Tomb Raider. She had the power to do that. And it resurrected his career. Marcheline wanted her to do it."
He almost jeopardized her adoption of Maddox
In March 2002, before Jolie and then-husband Billy Bob Thornton announced they were adopting son Maddox from Cambodia, Voight allegedly told the whole world. E! News reports that Voight spilled the beans at a pre-Oscar party about how excited he was to be a grandfather and that the adoption was happening, which took the couple by surprise, because they hadn't wanted to announce the news until Cambodian and United States officials finalized the adoption.
He said she has 'mental problems'
Jolie and Voight's relationship took a turn for the worse in 2002, when Voight gave a now-infamous interview to Access Hollywood (via Entertainment Weekly). During the interview, he alleged that Jolie had "mental problems" dating back to childhood and urged her fans and handlers to make sure that she got help in the wake of her split from Billy Bob Thornton. He also alleged that he had not been allowed to see Jolie's adopted son, Maddox.
The interview obviously struck a nerve with Jolie, who said in a statement, "I don't want to make public the reasons for my bad relationship with my father. I will only say that like every child, Jamie [Haven] and I would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad. After all these years, I have determined that it is not healthy for me to be around my father, especially now that I am responsible for my own child."
She dropped his last name
Entertainment Weekly reported that Jolie had legally dropped "Voight" as her legal last name on Sept. 12, 2002, a little over a month after Voight gave his infamous interview to Access Hollywood. Incidentally, the petition was actually filed on July 3. At the time, she also requested that her son's legal name be changed to Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie. Jolie filed for divorce from Billy Bob Thornton two weeks later, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Shiloh's name was a tribute to her dad
Curiously enough, the name of Jolie and Brad Pitt's first biological child, Shiloh Nouvel, was a tribute to Voight, according to Andrew Morton's biography, Angelina (via the Daily Beast). Voight and Bertrand almost named Jolie "Shiloh Baptist Voight" after a truck they'd been stuck driving behind in traffic. Bertrand allegedly put the kibosh on the name despite Voight's insistence, claiming it sounded "too Hebrew."
Still, despite the sweet tribute, Jolie and Voight didn't reconnect right away. In July 2006, six weeks after Shiloh's birth, he told People, "I never saw Angie's face more happy [than in the People spread with Pitt and Shiloh]. Deep, deep peace that never has been there before until this...Both Brad and Angie looked so happy. I haven't seen Shiloh yet. I'm looking forward to it. And no, [Jolie and I] haven't spoken...I don't, I didn't have any communication with her." This was confirmed in 2006 when he flubbed granddaughter Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt's name, calling her "Shakira." Ouch!
They reconciled somewhat in 2007
After years of tension, signs of a reconciliation came around 2007, after the death of Jolie's mother and Voight's wife. According to reports, it was Jolie's then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, who urged Jolie to make nice with Voight. "As Jon grows older he's realizing the importance of family, and longs to be a part of his daughter and grandchildren's lives," a source told Express. "It breaks his heart to be kept away. Since Angelina's mother died, Brad Pitt has been gently urging her to reconcile with her father, if not for her sake, then so the children can have their grandfather in their life."
Jolie reportedly reached out to Voight on Christmas 2007, allegedly at the behest of Pitt, who's always been close with his own family. "It was a short call but it meant the world to them," an insider told Express. "It was something for them to build on and Jon couldn't say enough good things about the way his daughter is conducting her life and how happy she seemed."
"I think sometimes you have to distance yourself from relationships you feel are unhealthy for you," Jolie said, according to the report. "But we have spoken and we are going to try to get to know each other and maybe try not to be this daddy and daughter, but to be there for each other as friends in the coming years."
Still, they didn't get together that well nor that often. "They've reconciled but she still has moments," Voight's longtime friend Burt Reynolds said on Loose Women (via the Daily Mail). "[Voight is] very kind. I love him so much. He doesn't deserve the kind of treatment that his daughter Angelina Jolie is giving him. I remember when she was ten years—old and I met her and I went over to Jon and said, 'You're in big trouble, she is going to be wild! I hope she doesn't hurt you.'"
They're on relatively good terms now
In 2010, Voight told People that he uses Skype to keep in touch with Jolie and his grandchildren. In 2011, Voight joined Jolie at the premiere of her directorial debut In The Land Of Blood And Honey. The following year, Voight went with Jolie, Pitt and the family to Europe, where Pitt was filming World War Z.
In 2013, Voight gushed about his estranged daughter to the Telegraph in light of her New York Times editorial about her double mastectomy and struggles with the BRCA-1 gene. "Angie is remarkable, and very brave," he said. "What she has been going through recently, dealing with her family history of cancer, and what she has been carrying all these years—wondering if this thing would happen to her—it's very difficult on a child. I am trying to be of help by giving her information and looking things up. She has given a real voice to the issue, and she has taken advice and gone in the direction that she has gone. I come from more of a holistic point of view."
That same year, Voight was in the audience while Jolie accepted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the annual Governors Awards, even though Jolie singled out her mom as her greatest influence on her work and made no mention of her father in her speech. Whatever the case, Voight told the Independent he is "always happy when she's happy" and "when she does good." "There's a lot of good that she's done, y'know?" He said. "She does things quietly to the side. I'm very proud of her. And she's a good director now too."
In November 2015, it was revealed that Voight and Jolie were closer than ever after he attended the premiere of her film with Pitt, By The Sea, that year. The reason: Jolie finally apologized to Voight, according to Closer Weekly. "It's been one of Jon's greatest regrets that he wasn't closer with Angie, and as a result, a bigger part of her children's lives," the report alleged. "He's tried to make amends for years—he's really become a very emotional, big-hearted man." "Angie invited Jon to spend Christmas with her family in LA and to a post-holiday getaway to their château in France," the insider continued. "She'll get Jon together with the kids for a week at least four times a year, and she's inviting him to the kids' birthday parties."
...but he wasn't invited to her wedding to Brad Pitt
Despite their reunion, Voight was persona non grata at Jolie and Pitt's wedding, held in August 2014 at Jolie and Pitt's chateau in France. "She didn't trust [inviting Voight]. He would have found a way for it to be about him," Rundle told Radar Online. "They may never get over the rift between them...She just knows who he is and she doesn't trust him."
Even though Pitt's entire immediate family was invited, sources told TMZ that Voight wasn't upset, explaining that the wedding conflicted with the Emmy Awards. (Voight had been nominated that year for Ray Donovan). "It sounds like it was a wonderful wedding," Voight later told E! News. "It must have been very beautiful with the kids participating. I know it was during Emmy weeks and they were able to do it very quietly. I'm very happy for them."
...and he's spoken out about their divorce
Voight has spoken vaguely about Pitt and Jolie's September 2016 divorce filing, telling Radar Online, "I don't know much about it except it must be something serious...I'm concerned." "It's very sad," He added to Inside Edition. "Something very serious must have happened for Angelina to make a decision like this...it's a sad thing."
Voight isn't just speaking to press about the split, either. Sources told Us Weekly that Pitt and Voight have remained close since the couple first got together in 2004. "[Pitt] told her dad that what he loves about her is how passionate and extreme she is. He's been drawn to that." The insider said Pitt and Voight have been keeping in touch since Pitt and Jolie's September split, and Jolie isn't happy about it. "She is really pissed at her dad. She is really bothered that he is talking to Brad...Angelina is speaking to [Voight] but not a lot and not telling him hardly anything because she doesn't trust him."
In other words: expect the relationship between Jolie and Voight to remain complicated for years to come.