Angelina Jolie is undeniably one of the most celebrated stars of Hollywood. With an Academy Award and three Golden Globe awards, Jolie has long established her status as one of the industry’s most talented actors.
Besides acting, her life as a humanitarian as well as a doting mother earned her enormous fame and admiration. However, the Girl, Interrupted star was always open about her wild and painful past, a major part of which involved her rapport with her parents, especially her distraught relationship with her father. Let’s shed some light on the subject.
What was Angelina Jolie’s relationship with her mother?
Unlike her troubled relationship with her actor father Jon Voight, Jolie was closer to her mother Marcheline Bertrand who led a relatively quieter life than her husband. Jolie’s parents divorced when she was only six, and though not much detail has been shed on the cause of their separation, Jon’s infidelity was admittedly one of the key reasons.
Solely raised by her mom, Bertrand’s death in 2007 due to breast and ovarian cancer was an extremely saddening affair for Jolie which deeply impacted her. As a retrospective reflection on the event, the Maleficent star penned down her feelings about her mom’s passing with the New York Times in 2020, where she added how extremely painful certain days like Mother’s Day can be for people who lost their mother:
“I lost my mother in my thirties. When I look back to that time, I can see how much her death changed me. It was not sudden, but so much shifted inside. Losing a mother’s love and warm, soft embrace is like having someone rip away a protective blanket.”
She also disclosed certain intricate details of her parents’ relationship explaining how her father’s infidelity deeply affected Bertrand and how following their divorce, she raised Jolie and her brother on her own:
“When my father had an affair, it changed her life. It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother. Her dreams of being an actor faded as she found herself, at the age of 26, raising two children with a famous ex who would cast a long shadow on her life. After she died, I found a video of her acting in a short film. She was good. It was all possible for her.”
Today, Jolie is a loving mother of six children and their upbringing with love and affection is probably a testimony to her relationship with her mother.
Jolie’s relationship with father explained
Contrary to her extremely close bond with her mom, the Oscar-winning actress had a tumultuous relationship with her father. Although, what exactly happened between them is unclear, it’s believed that their relationship began to deteriorate in the early 2000s.
In a 2002 interview with Access Hollywood, Voight mentioned that Jolie had “mental problems” and thus was in desperate need of assistance. The same year the veteran actor was barred from meeting Jolie at a Hollywood party by Jolie’s manager.
The Mr. and Mrs. Smith star, opened up about her toxic relationship with her father and went on Access Hollywood to say:
“I don’t want to make public the reasons for my bad relationship with my father. I will only say that, like every child, Jamie and I would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad. After all these years, I have determined that it is not healthy for me to be around my father, especially now that I am responsible for my own child.”
Their relationship worsened to a considerable extent, to the point of Jolie to drop her father’s last name. Even today, we know her as Angeline Jolie without the last name, Voight.
While the Midnight Cowboy actor expressed his concern for Jolie and claimed his regret for not being there for his daughter, Jolie’s manager revealed a completely different story telling Access Hollywood that the actor was abusive towards his daughter while she was filming Girl, Interrupted.
Nevertheless, they remained estranged for a couple of years, and it was her former husband Brad Pitt who played a vital role in their reconciliation. In 2010, the father and daughter were spotted together at a public event and afterwards, while speaking with People, Voight expressed his joy of reconnecting with his daughter and grandchildren.