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Angelina Jolie wasn’t looking for love or a boyfriend when she met Brad Pitt. Reflecting on their relationship, the Girl, Interrupted star couldn’t believe she ended up with someone like the Fight Club actor to begin with.
How Brad Pitt surprised Angelina Jolie when they first met
It didn’t seem like things were set up for Pitt and Jolie to become a couple when they first met. Pitt was in a high-profile relationship with Jennifer Aniston at the time. Meanwhile, Jolie was single, and didn’t see her relationship status changing anytime soon. She was coming out of a divorce with fellow actor Billy Bob Thornton, and committed herself to being a single mom to first son Maddox. Incidentally, Jolie also swore off dating people in a particular field.
Prior to Thornton, Jolie was also in a relationship with Johnny Lee Miller, who she worked with on Hackers. The pair were married from 1996 to 2000. After Jolie’s past experiences with these two stars, she swore off dating actors entirely.
“After my last divorce, I said I was absolutely going to marry somebody in another field, an aid worker or something,” she said in a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair.
But meeting Pitt convinced the Maleficent star to go back on her word. It helped that overtime, it was easy to ignore the fact that Pitt was an actor.
“Then I met Brad, everything I wasn’t looking for, but the best man, the best father I could possibly wish for, you know? I don’t see him as an actor. I see him very much as a dad, as somebody who loves travel and architecture more than being in movies,” she said.
Angelina Jolie didn’t believe she’d get married after growing up in a broken home
Jolie felt that history didn’t favor her chances of ever truly settling down with someone. Her father, Jon Voight, married her late mother Marcheline Bertrand in 1971. But the pair separated in 1976 before finalizing their divorce in 1980. Jolie asserted that their divorce made a happy married life feel out of her reach.
“I never thought I’d have children, I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person,” she once told Elle!.
“Having come from a broken home – you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them,” she added.
Meeting Pitt would change her mind. During the interview, she encapsulated why she and Pitt worked together so well.
“You get together and you’re two individuals and you feel inspired by each other, you challenge each other, you complement each other, drive each other beautifully crazy,” she continued. “After all these years, we have history—and when you have history with somebody, you’re friends in such a very real, deep way that there’s such a comfort, and an ease, and a deep love that comes from having been through quite a lot together.”
Angelina Jolie felt ‘broken’ after her divorce from Brad Pitt
Jolie and Pitt dated for almost ten years before marrying each other in 2014. But they were only married for two years before filing for divorce in 2016. In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Jolie gave an update on what her mental state was five years after her and Pitt’s shocking separation. She confided that the experience left her broken at one point.
“There’s a lot I can’t say,” she told the publication. “I think at the end of the day, even if you and a few people you love are the only people who know the truth of your life, what you fight for, or what you sacrifice, or what you’ve suffered, you come to be at peace with that, regardless of everything going on around you.”
Although she didn’t provide any details, Jolie claimed that domestic violence played a part in her and Pitt’s separation. She alluded to as such during the interview, an accusation that Pitt vehemently denies.
“I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly. 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 said.
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