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As her legal battle with Brad Pitt continues, Angelina Jolie has revealed she feared for the safety of her children and family during the pair’s 12-year-relationship.
While speaking with the Guardian’s Weekend magazine to promote her new book Know Your Rights, a guide for youth and young people about their rights, the conversation turned to Jolie’s own family, however, she made sure to note that due to an ongoing legal battle over her and Pitt’s children, she was unable to say much. “I’m still in my own legal situation, I can’t speak about that,” Jolie noted, before reportedly nodding when asked if she was alluding to the domestic abuse allegations she made against Pitt in 2017.
Asked if she feared for the safety of her children—the pair share six kids, adopted sons Maddox, 20 and Pax, 17, adopted daughter Zahara, 16, biological daughter Shiloh, 15, and biological twins Knox and Vivienne—during the relationship, Jolie responded: “Yes, for my family. My whole family.”
“I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly,” Jolie said of divorcing Pitt. It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.” She added the experience left her feeling “broken” and when she was asked what the past five years have taken out of her, she said: “I mean, in some ways, it’s been the last decade. There’s lots I can’t say”.
Touching on her own legal fight with her ex-husband, Jolie said, “It has been so horrific that I almost have to see it as a godsend to be in a position to be able to fight this system. It doesn’t start with the violation [the plane incident]. It’s so much more complicated than that. My 17-year-old, for example, has been denied a voice in court.”
During the interview, Jolie also spoke about a traumatic incident with Harvey Weinstein aged 21, during the making of the Miramax film Playing by Heart.
“If you get yourself out of the room, you think he attempted but didn’t right? The truth is that the attempt and the experience of the attempt is an assault. It was beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape. I stayed away and warned people about him,” Jolie said, adding she “never associated or worked with him again” but that “it was hard for me when Brad did.”
Speaking about Pitt working with Weinstein despite knowing he had assaulted her, Jolie said “We fought about it. Of course it hurt.”
