The One Tragedy That Changed Angelina Jolie Forever
Angelina Jolie is by far one of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, thanks to her long list of accolades — including her Oscar win, her A-list status in Hollywood, and of course, all of the attention that she's gotten in her personal life. Jolie has made many headlines for her work as an actor and a director — and for her and Brad Pitt's contentious divorce. In 2017, one year after she and Pitt separated, Jolie opened up about single life to The Telegraph. "I think now I need to rediscover a little bit of the old me," she said. "I think we lose our way a bit. I have had a lot happen in my life, from certain people passing to health issues to raising the children."
But before her divorce from Pitt and all of the media speculation about her personal life, there was one personal tragedy that ended up reshaping her life forever. Keep reading below to find out what happened.
Angelina Jolie's struggle of coming from a broken home
Angelina Jolie is sometimes referred to as Hollywood royalty, seeing how she's the daughter of Hollywood actor Jon Voight, but she wasn't someone who grew up in a fairytale castle. In fact, Jolie has made it no secret that her relationship with her father wasn't always easy.
Her Oscar-winning father left her and her family, which included her mother Marcheline Bertrand and her brother James Haven, when she was just "an infant," per The Hollywood Reporter. Because of this, Jolie had doubts about whether or not she would ever build a life and family of her own. She told Elle in 2014, "I never thought I'd have children, I never thought I'd be in love, I never thought I'd meet the right person. Having come from a broken home — you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairytale, and you just don't look for them."
Jolie also did everything she could to distance herself from her father, including this one move that a lot of children of famous Hollywood stars would never dare of doing themselves. But Jolie did it without any regrets. Keep scrolling below.
Angelina Jolie is working thru the pain
While there are a lot of children of Hollywood stars who use their last name and their connections as a way to open doors, Angelina Jolie did the opposite. While on The Hollywood Reporter's "Awards Chatter" podcast in 2017, Jolie said she dropped her father's last name because she didn't want to be accused of Hollywood nepotism once she started looking for work after graduating from high school. That, and she also took a swipe at Jon Voight by saying that she's never really felt close to him in her life. "I didn't want to walk into a room as 'Jon's daughter,'" Jolie said. "I wanted to see if I could get the job on my own."
However, Jolie did manage to find some room in her heart to get Voight to ironically play her dead father in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" in 2001. But until this day, she still can't refer to him as her "dad" but their relationship is improving. She explained in the podcast: "Jon and I have gotten to know each other — through grandchildren now, we're finding a new relationship, and it's very, very nice. We've had some difficulties, and through art is the way that we've been able to talk. It's the common language."
In other words, Jolie found some sort of solitude in knowing that she can still maintain a relationship with someone who has brought her the same amount of love as pain in her life.
Jon Voight has turned his parenting wrongs into grandparenting rights
Even though Angelina Jolie has been very cautious about opening up her heart again after her father Jon Voight walked out on their family when she was just a small child, she has made the extraordinary step of making sure that he is present and involved in her children's lives. Jolie's large family, which she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt, includes 20-year-old Maddox, 17-year-old Pax, 16-year-old Zahara, 15-year-old Shiloh, and 13-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.
Given their own tumultuous history, Jolie has expressed that she is actually in awe of the way her father has taken on his grandparenting role, especially after her split with Pitt. "He's been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time," she told Vanity Fair in 2017. "He knows kind of the rule — don't make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who's creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library."
With that said, it seems that Voight is doing his best to turn his parenting wrongs into grandparenting rights.