RIP #Brangelina
ANGELINA Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, bringing an end to what began as the world’s most tabloid headline-generating romance before morphing into a glamorous engine of family and philanthropy.
Jolie, 41, cited “irreconcilable differences” in divorce papers filed Monday in Los Angeles. She is seeking physical custody of their six children, with visitation rights for Pitt.
An attorney for Jolie, Robert Offer, said that her decision to divorce was made “for the health of the family.” The filing dated the couple’s separation to last Thursday.
“I am very saddened by this, but what matters most now is the well-being of our kids. I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time,” Pitt said in a statement to People.
Meanwhile, Jolie’s manager Geyer Kosinski told E! News: “Angelina will always do what’s in the best interest of taking care of her family. She appreciates everyone’s understanding of their need for privacy at this time.”
Mark Vincent Kaplan, a veteran divorce attorney who was Kevin Federline’s attorney in his divorce from Britney Spears and has handled several high-profile cases, reviewed the filing at the AP’s request.
“There is no indication on the face of the petition filed by Ms. Jolie that there is a pre-nuptial agreement, or that if there is a pre-nup, she is asking the court to consider whether or not to invalidate it,” said Kaplan.
The couple has reportedly amassed more than half a billion dollars since the start of the relationship.
Though together for 12 years, Pitt and Jolie—known as “Brangelina”—only wed in August 2014. They married privately at their French chateau in the Provence hamlet of Correns with their children serving as ring bearers and flower girls. They announced the ceremony days later.
Their children are 15-year-old Maddox, 12-year-old Pax, 11-year-old Zahara, 10-year-old Shiloh, and eight-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.
This is the second marriage for Pitt, 52, who previously wed Jennifer Aniston. It’s the third for Jolie, who was previously married to Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller.
Their initial romance sparked a tabloid avalanche unlike any in recent memory. Pitt and Jolie became close while filming 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, prompting widespread speculation—consistently denied by the couple—that Jolie prompted Pitt’s divorce from Aniston. Pitt and Aniston announced their separation in January 2005.
Now, New York Post is reporting that Jolie is getting a dose of her own medicine as Marion Cotillard has been dragged into the divorce drama. Cotillard stars with Pitt in the upcoming Robert Zemeckis spy thriller Allied, and the co-stars reportedly have a chemistry comparable to what Jolie and Pitt had in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
“Brad and Marion immediately had the utmost respect for each other, so once they delved into their characters, their chemistry was electric,” Allied producer Graham King told People magazine last month.
Jolie reportedly hired a private detective to spy on Pitt while filming Allied.
“She hired a private eye because she felt that he was fooling around with her on the set, and it turns out, he was. And that was the final straw,” a source told the Post.
Cotillard, through a family friend, denied the affair.
“Marion and Guillaume are blissfully happy, and these kind of claims are not what Marion wants to be hearing,” a source made a statement to the Daily Mail on behalf of Cotillard, referencing Cotillard’s nine-year relationship with fellow actor Guillaume Canet.
But Jolie’s decision to file for divorce wasn’t just about Cotillard.
“The atmosphere (Allied off-set) was full of hard drugs and Russian hookers, and Angie was told Brad got caught up in it. He’s in the throes of some insane midlife crisis, and Angie is fed up,” the source also told the Post.
According to TMZ, Jolie is asking for sole physical custody because she doesn’t want Pitt near her children. She will retain legal custody for the couple, which means all decisions involving the children will be agreed by both parties.
While the Brangelina relationship started with a media upheaval, they eventually settled into their own unique kind of globe-trotting domesticity. They were seldom-seen Hollywood royalty, their image predicated more on parenting than partying.
The pair adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. In 2006, they formed the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to which they funneled many of the millions they made selling personal pictures to celebrity magazines.
Jolie, who became special envoy for the United Nations in 2012, became an outspoken voice for refugees, as well as for breast cancer treatment after undergoing a double mastectomy herself. Pitt built homes in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Jolie also launched herself as a film director. Last year, the couple starred together in a film she directed, By the Sea, playing a glamorous couple vacationing together in France while their marriage was on the rocks. It made a mere $538,000 at the box office domestically.
In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press, Jolie said playing a couple with marital problems was cathartic.
“It almost makes you get past those issues because you can laugh at them,” Jolie said. “You do a film about bad marriage and you witness that behavior. You study it, you let it out, you attack each other and then you just want to hold each other and make sure you never behave that way.”
The pair was seen publicly together as recently as July, when they were spotted taking their twins to breakfast in Los Angeles.
Jolie, earlier this year, finished shooting her fourth feature as director, First They Killed My Father. The film, about the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, was shot in Cambodia.
In recent years, Pitt’s production company, Plan B, has been behind a growing number of acclaimed releases, including the Academy Award best-picture winner 12 Years a Slave, last year’s The Big Short and the recently debuted festival hit Moonlight.
The hashtag Brangelina trended worldwide for much of Tuesday (in the US).
While Pitt and Aniston—now married to actor and writer Justin Theroux since last year—broke up in 2005 yet, the actress became the face of Brangelina-breakup memes.
And now, people are awaiting Aniston’s response to the breakup. Us Weekly magazine is reporting that while Aniston did not wish ill on Brangelina, she did say the breakup was Jolie’s karma. (AP with JGA)