Angelina Jolie has hinted that she wants to quit acting, as she reveals her plans to leave “unhealthy” Hollywood and “spend more time” in Cambodia once she’s resolved her divorce battles with Brad Pitt, which she claims has limited her ability “to travel freely.”
These revelations from Jolie come in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal magazine, the Daily Mail reported. The 48-year-old actor, director and humanitarian lamented that so much of her life in recent years has been centered around Los Angeles.
With her actor parents, Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, Jolie grew up around the Hollywood industry. The Oscar winner told the Wall Street Journal: “I grew up in quite a shallow place. Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So you seek authenticity.”
Jolie said she would have left Los Angeles much sooner, but she explained that she’s been stuck having to deal with her protracted legal battles with her ex-husband Pitt.
“It’s part of what happened after my divorce,” Jolie said. “I lost the ability to live and travel as freely. I will move when I can.”
Jolie initially filed for divorce in 2016, but the exes have been mired in bitter disputes over custody of their six children and the sale of Chateau Miraval, the French winery they bought together in 2007.
As is Jolie’s practice in interviews, she didn’t say too much to the Wall Street Journal about her marriage to Pitt or the ongoing fall-out from their split. In court, she has alleged that he became intoxicated and violent with her and several of their children on a tense plane ride from Europe in 2016, which prompted her to file for divorce. Pitt has long denied being abusive, and the FBI investigated Pitt for alleged child abuse but decided against pursuing criminal charges.
In the Wall Street Journal story, Jolie said that she and her children “needed to heal,” in explaining why she stepped back somewhat from working in movies. She’s only appeared in five films over the past seven years.
With Pitt, Jolie shares children Maddox, 22, Pax, 19, Zahara, 18, Shiloh, 17 and twins Vivienne and Knox, 15. Other reports have said that Jolie felt bound to stay in California so that her children could have regular contact with Pitt, who is based in Los Angeles.
Three of those children have since become adults and gone off to college. There also are reports that the three oldest children, who were first adopted by Jolie, may be estranged from their father, or that they have at least distanced themselves from him. Vogue magazine referred to Jolie in a September profile as “a single mother of six.”
This situation perhaps leaves Jolie feeling that she can begin her move away from Los Angeles. She is known to have a home in Cambodia, where here oldest son, Maddox, was born. She also appears eager to embark on projects that don’t involve work in movies.
One of those projects has had Jolie making a home in New York City and launching a new career as the head of a luxury fashion brand bearing her name. In an interview with Vogue in September, Jolie explained that she had stepped back from her prestigious, high-profile work as a goodwill ambassador and special envoy for the UN Refugee Agency.
In her new phase in life, Jolie has partnered with Chloe creative director Gabriela Hearst to sell clothes in a building that was once owned by Andy Warhol. She told Vogue she wants to operate this space “as a kind of cultural center-meets-design workshop.” This means that the space could feature a gallery for local artisans and a cafe run in partnership with refugee organizations, she said.
Jolie joked to the Wall Street Journal that she doesn’t really have a social life and that all her “closest friends are refugees,” the Daily Mail reported. During her more than two decades of work for the UN, Jolie has visited camps in Cambodia, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and other countries.
“There’s a reason people who have been through hardship are also much more honest and much more connected, and I am more relaxed with them,” Jolie told the Wall Street Journal. ‘Why do I like spending time with people who’ve survived and are refugees? They’ve confronted so much in life that it brings forward not just strength, but humanity.”
