Angelina Jolie is many things. She’s an Academy Award-winning actress, taking home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2000 for her role in Girl, Interrupted. She’s a celebrated director, getting behind the camera for films like Unbroken, First They Killed My Father, and In The Land of Blood and Honey. She’s an activist, working with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other humanitarian efforts. But, perhaps her most valued title is that of mother. Angelina and her ex-husband Brad Pitt share six children — Maddox, Zahara, Pax, Shiloh, and twins Vivienne and Knox.
Though Angie and Brad’s 2016 split resulted in contentious divorce proceedings and a custody battle, the couple has tried their best to coparent their kids and keep their drama out of the limelight. Angie offered a rare glimpse into her life as a mother when talking with British Vogue in 2021.
“I was never very good at sitting still,” she said. “Even though I wanted to have many children and be a mom, I always imagined it kind of like Jane Goodall. Traveling in the middle of the jungle somewhere.”
“I didn’t imagine it in that true, traditional sense. I feel like I’m lacking in all the skills to be a traditional stay-at-home mom,” the actress explained. “I’m managing through it because the children are quite resilient, and they’re helping me, but I’m not good at it at all.” Adding that she and the kids are “a team,” the Academy Award winner said, “They’re pretty capable.”
Learn more about the “resilient” and “capable” Jolie-Pitt siblings below.
Maddox Jolie-Pitt
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Maddox (born August 5, 2001) is Angelina’s oldest child. Angelina adopted Maddox from a Cambodian orphanage in 2002 when he was seven months old. The actress was still married to Billy Bob Thornton at the time, but she adopted Maddox on her own. In 2019, the young adult began attending Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Angelina dropped her son off at the school, and the emotional ordeal left her a crying mess.
In 2020, he returned home to study remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Angelina told a South Korean outlet in April 2020 that Maddox will return to campus once the pandemic gets better. “He’ll be back as soon as things settle,” she said. “He’s using the time to focus on his Korean and Russian studies. We are all so happy, as a family, that we will have the opportunity to get to know South Korea even better through Maddox, and with him, during his studies.”
The eldest Jolie-Pitt has worked in Hollywood. He served as a producer on his mother’s First They Killed My Father, a biographical war film about the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, and an assistant on By the Sea, the 2015 romance drama that starred Angelina and Brad.
In 2022, Maddox reportedly celebrated his 21st birthday with his mother and siblings. Brad was absent from the party due to work commitments. In 2020, a source told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that Brad and Maddox’s strained relationship had “improved” somewhat. However, since Maddox turned 18, he was under no legal obligation to spend time with his father.
Zahara Jolie Pitt
(Terma,SL / BACKGRID)
Zahara (born January 5, 2005) is one of Angelina’s adopted children. She adopted her daughter from Ethiopia in 2005 at six months old. Zahara has helped inspire her famous parents’ charity work. The Jolie-Pitt Foundation created the Zahara Program and the Zahara Children’s Center, launched to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis and provide further research on the disease in Ethiopia. The foundation similarly created the Maddox Chivan Children’s Centre in their son’s name to help families affected by HIV/AIDS in Phnom Penh. Like her brother, Zahara has forayed into Hollywood, having starred alongside her mom in Kung Fu Panda 3 as the voice of Meng Meng.
During a TIME 100 interview with activist Vanessa Nakate in July 2020 amid discussions of Black Lives Matter, Angelina revealed she had learned a lot from Zahara.
“My daughter is from Ethiopia, one of my children,” she said. “And I have learned so much from her. She is my family, but she is an extraordinary African woman, and her connection to her country, her continent, is very — it’s her own, and it’s something I only stand back in awe of.”
In August 2022, Angelina announced that Zahara would attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Spelman College is an HBCU — a “historically black college or university, which has been a way for higher education to offer “all students, regardless of race, an opportunity to develop their skills and talents,” per the U.S. Department of Education. When dropping off her child at college, Angelina got emotional.
“I’m gonna start crying! I have not started crying yet,” she said at the time, adding that she’s holding it together.
Brad raved about his eldest daughter during an interview at one of his Bullet Train premieres. “She’s so smart. She’s going to flourish even more at college,” he said, per Vanity Fair. “It’s an exciting and beautiful time to find her own way and pursue her interests. I’m so proud.”
Pax Jolie-Pitt
(Shutterstock)
Angelina Jolie adopted Pax (born November 29, 2003) from Vietnam in 2007 when he was three years old. In an interview with Vogue India, the actress reflected on adopting her son from Vietnam after adopting Maddox from Cambodia, two places that have been at war.
When asked if it were a conscious decision, Angelina said, “I did think about that. I did originally think not to adopt from Vietnam because Mad was Cambodian, and the two countries have a complex history,” she said. “Then I was reading a book on human rights and found myself staring at an image of a Vietnamese fighter held captive by Americans. I thought of my own country and our involvement in Southeast Asia. I thought of focusing on a future where we were all family.”
“I am very blessed to have been allowed to be their mom,” Angelina continued. “I am grateful every day.” Like his siblings, Pax has worked in a few of his mom’s films, starring in Kung Fu Panda 3 as Yoo and working in camera and electrical in First They Killed My Father.
Pax graduated from high school in 2021, but it’s unclear if he decided to pursue higher education like his older brother and sister.
Shiloh Jolie-Pitt
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Shiloh is Angelina and Brad’s biological firstborn child. The teen was born in Swakopmund, Namibia, on May 27, 2006, and has dual citizenship in the African country and the United States.
In an interview with Vanity Fair in June 2010, Angelina opened up about her daughter’s personality. “Shiloh’s hysterically funny, one of the goofiest, most playful people you’ll ever meet,” she said, adding that she was most like Shiloh as a kid. “Goofy and verbal, the early signs of a performer, I used to get dressed up in costumes and jump around. But at some point, I got closed off, darker. I don’t remember anything happening. I think you just get hit with the realities of certain things in life, think too much, start to realize the world isn’t as you wished it would be, so you deepen.”
Shiloh has an interest in the arts and loves her dance class. In 2022, her dance moves with the Millennium Dance Complex went viral thanks to a few social media videos. In one video, Shiloh danced along to Doja Cat’s “Vegas,” showing off grace and coordination that left her father stunned.
“It brings a tear to the eye,” Brad said in a 2022 interview. “I love them to find their own way, find things they’re interested in, find their own voice and flourish. … I don’t know where she got it from. I’m Mr. Two-Left-Feet here.”
Like her siblings, Shiloh has appeared in her mother’s films, including Kung Fu Panda 3 as the voice of Shuai Shuai.
Vivienne Jolie-Pitt
(Backgrid)
Vivienne (born July 12, 2008) is Angelina and Brad’s youngest daughter and twin of son Knox. Like her siblings, she has starred opposite her mom in her films, including Maleficent as a young Princess Aurora. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2014, Angelina explained that they cast her daughter in the role because she was the only child who was not afraid of her in her costume.
“We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and I at all,” she explained. “But the other 3- and 4-year-old [performers] wouldn’t come near me. It had to be a child [who] liked me and wasn’t afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be Viv.”
Speaking with BBC Radio 4 in 2016, Angelina also revealed that Viv had a strong interest in learning Arabic. The actress said that all six of her children were learning new languages. “I asked them what languages they wanted to learn, and [Shiloh] ‘s learning Khmer, which is the Cambodian language, Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, [Zahara] ‘s speaking French,” she said. “Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic and Knox is learning sign language.”
Knox Jolie-Pitt
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Knox is Angelina and Brad’s youngest and twin of Vivienne. Both siblings were born in Nice, France, on July 12, 2008. In her interview with Vanity Fair, Angelina offered this tidbit about the twins’ personalities: “Knox and Viv are classic boy and girl,” she said. “She’s really female. And he’s really a little dude.” Like his siblings, Knox has starred in his mom’s films, having voiced the character of Ku Ku in Kung Fu Panda 3. As it turns out, Knox and his twin Vivienne have a bit of an entrepreneurial flare, as they were spotted selling organic dog treats with their famous mom at a park in Los Angeles in 2019 to raise funds for Hope For Paws, an organization that rescues homeless dogs.
