Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie‘s marriage was one of the most talked about unions in Hollywood while they were riding high as one of the industry’s most high-profile couples.
But their split has arguably become an even bigger discussion point with their legal battle being drawn out over years after an alleged argument on a plane that ended their relationship.
Just last week DailyMail.com reported that the 48-year-old actress and mother-of-six accused her 60-year-old estranged spouse of being physically and emotionally abusive before the private jet incident in 2016.
‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s plane trip from France to Los Angeles… this flight marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well,’ her attorneys claim in newly released court papers.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ‘s marriage became one of the most talked about unions in Hollywood. Pictured with son Maddox in 2013
The court papers claimed that Jolie had evidence of ‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of the family and control abuse of Jolie’ and alleged the children continued to experience ‘significant and ongoing post-traumatic stress.’
Pitt has denied all allegations of physical abuse and was not charged following an FBI probe into the incident on the flight.
The once golden couple, who met on the set of 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith while he was still married to Jennifer Aniston, adopted one son, Pax, and welcomed daughter Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne during their tumultuous relationship.
As their bitter legal battle continues, FEMAIL has delved into how Pitt and Jolie’s relationship came together and fell apart – from the controversial beginning of their romance to their eventual split that has led to reports of a family feud and allegations of abuse.
Pitt and Jolie meet on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith while he is still married to Friends star Aniston
Pitt and Jolie’s relationship had a controversial start after the pair met on the set of their action-romance movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while he was still married to Aniston in 2003.
Though the couple denied their romance had blossomed then, the alleged love triangle narrative would hang over their union for years to come.
Jolie herself told Vogue in 2006 that they didn’t realize until the end of shooting that their friendship might have been something more and neither was looking for a relationship at the time.
She said the pair ‘remained very, very good friends’ when they finished work on the film.
Pitt and Jolie met on set of the 2005 movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith (seen) and married in 2014. But in 2016, the pair divorced after an alleged physical altercation on a private plane
Their relationship had a controversial start as Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston when they met, but the couple (pictured 2004) denied infidelity had anything to do with their split
‘I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom,’ Jolie told the fashion bible.
‘Because of the film we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened.’
She added: ‘And then life developed in a way where we could be together, where it felt like something we would do, we should do.’
In an interview with the New York Times in 2008, she described Mr. & Mrs. Smith as ‘the movie where their parents fell in love’ when asked if her kids had seen it.
During shooting, sources on the film said that Jolie would show up at Pitt’s trailer and tell him: ‘Maddox would like to say “Hi.”‘ Pitt was enchanted – by the boy and his mother.
Eventually the actor and his then wife, Aniston, separated in January 2005 before their divorce was finalized later in October.
At the time, the former couple shut down accusations that they were going their separate ways due to infidelity through a joint statement that read, ‘Our separation is not the result of any of the speculation reported by the tabloid media.’
During his relationship with Jolie, he also formally adopted her son, Maddox, in 2006.
The couple had an unconventional family life – including buying then seven-year-old Maddox knives and allowing their children to ‘rule the roost’
The first thing to note is that there was nothing conventional about the experiment in family living conducted by Pitt and Jolie.
For instance, in an interview with W Magazine, the actress revealed she taken her then seven-year-old son, Maddox, blade shopping.
Jolie shared that her own mother had taken her to ‘buy her first daggers when she was 11 or 12,’ adding that she had ‘already bought Maddox some’ from a ‘special shop,’ she told the publication as per Today.
But she stressed that the knives did not have any sharp edges, adding: ‘We also talk about samurais and about the idea of defending someone as good. We talk about everything.’
In another interview with Entertainment Weekly, Jolie revealed that a then six-year-old Maddox drew a picture of a machine gun on her Mother’s Day card – and Pitt had the image made into a gold trinket to hang on a chain.
‘He’s (Maddox) all into war and guns. So for Mother’s Day he drew a machine-gun, and Brad had it made into a necklace, which is really sweet. It’s really cute,’ she gushed.
According to sources in France, where the family spent holidays at the Chateau Miraval, the children ‘always ruled the roost,’ DailyMail.com reported.
The first thing to note is that there was nothing conventional about the experiment in family living conducted by Pitt and Jolie. Pictured with their brood in 2011
For instance, in an interview with W Magazine, the actress revealed she taken her then seven-year-old son, Maddox, blade shopping. Pictured in 2023 together
It seems that an ‘anything goes’ principle applied for the family of three adopted children – Maddox, from Cambodia, Pax from Vietnam, and Zahara an orphan from Ethiopia – plus twins Knox and Violet, and daughter Shiloh.
At home there were no rules, except that the children weren’t encouraged to make any friends outside of the family circle.
For a time, Maddox liked to speak French, even though the rest of the family, with the exception of his mother and brother Pax, struggled with the language.
Shiloh, for some time, only answered to the name of John and dressed in boy’s clothes, including neckties and fedora hats. The habit arose because of her passion for the Peter Pan movie.
One former nanny, who quit in despair, reportedly said that the children insisted on breakfasting on items like pizza or chocolate, and enjoyed a diet of junk food, particularly Cheetos.
A source told DailyMail.com that the nannies varied in number between six and nine, with each having one child as their key responsibility. They were, the insider claimed, rotated every six months to prevent the attachment becoming too settled.
When Shiloh was three and Zahara five, both would carry blankies, even on a trip to the grocery store, with photographers capturing the youngsters with their comforters on several occasions.
Pitt and Jolie’s relationship baggage: He had his failed marriage to Aniston and she had a troubled upbringing – including her father Jon Voight’s own infidelity
Jolie started her family in 2002. Having filmed Tomb Raider in Cambodia, she decided that she wanted to adopt an orphaned Cambodian baby – even though her second marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton had recently ended.
She later said: ‘Our marriage was falling apart before I adopted and by the time Maddox came home, Billy and I were apart.’
As the scandal over Pitt’s marriage breakup with Aniston raged, she was spotted playing with Maddox in Central Park, looking the picture of loving motherhood.
Meanwhile Jolie’s own father Jon Voight was not convinced by her reinvention as the ultimate mother. When she adopted Maddox he begged her to seek help for the ‘serious symptoms of real problems’ he thought she showed. Voight added, bluntly: ‘She has never been normal.’
Born on June 4, 1975, she is the daughter of actor Voight and French-Canadian actress Marcheline Bertrand. Her parents separated in 1976, and she and her brother, James, were then raised by their mother.
Jolie started her family in 2002. Having filmed Tomb Raider in Cambodia, she decided that she wanted to adopt an orphaned Cambodian baby. She is pictured here with Maddox in 2005
Meanwhile Jolie’s own father Jon Voight was not convinced by her reinvention as the ultimate mother. The father and daughter had a fraught relationship stemming partly from his infidelity
Apparently, she took her parents’ breakup hard, and the relationship with her father has since been difficult. She struggled to get over the fact that he was not faithful to her mother, and she spent years watching him from afar, wishing that they had more of a relationship.
‘My mom was in a lot of pain. My father had an affair, and then there were a lot of challenges with child support and alimony,’ she told the Guardian in 2021.
‘I didn’t feel that close to my father,’ she also shared in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. ‘I felt more of my mother’s daughter when I was a child.’
As a teenager, she was sexually precocious, moving her 16-year-old boyfriend into the family home when she was 14. By her own account, she even tried drugs.
Writer Ian Halperin said in his recent book about Brangelina that she was sent to see the school therapist and claimed that a report written about her by the medical professional, and seen by him, said that she was ‘inclined towards anti-social psychopathy’ – a serious and startling claim.
‘My mom was in a lot of pain. My father had an affair, and then there were a lot of challenges with child support and alimony,’ she told the Guardian in 2021. Pictured together in 2001
Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy, coupled with a use of charisma, manipulation, sex, violence, and intimidation.
She previously self-harmed, once telling an interviewer: ‘I collected knives and always had certain things around.
‘For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.’
By the time she was a mother, her own mother was engaged in a long and devastating battle with breast cancer. She died in 2007, aged 56, after being diagnosed in 1999.
Perhaps she felt that the experience would act as a bulwark against the coming grief; however, Jolie was conflicted about having a baby of her own, and opted to adopt.
‘Having a child of my own would make me feel that there was a child out there who did not have a home because I had chosen to have a baby,’ she told an interviewer in 2005.
Trouble in paradise: Jolie and Pitt begin sleeping in separate rooms – as actor turns to alcohol for solace
Both of them worked periodically, and the whole family spent years crisscrossing the globe. They settled at one time in New Orleans, and in France, and called a myriad of hotels a temporary home.
Jolie at one time would rent a suite at a Los Angeles hotel, even though she and Pitt had property in Hollywood.
Reports published in a number of US magazines at the time claimed that the actress used to ask for the suite that she had booked for her mother when she was ill, and would go up to her room and spend time alone and weep.
Pitt struggled with managing the relationship and the spotlight; he would drink heavily and said more than once that he would wake up still drunk from the previous night. His friend, director Quentin Tarantino, alluded to his pot-smoking habit, which Jolie disapproved of.
One hotel employee, Anna Kowalski, alleged that Jolie and Pitt habitually slept in separate rooms from as early as 2010, years before their split, and had little to do with each other, with Jolie sitting alone drinking wine in the bedroom of the suite, and Pitt sitting in another room with a beer.
As the kids grew older, she found a passion for charitable missions, and would bring them along. Zahara and Shiloh were taken to Ethiopia to scout locations for a medical center, while Maddox went to Iraq as a birthday treat.
The final nail in the marriage coffin: Jolie’s brother James moves in and becomes a second ‘dad’ to the former couple’s brood
Angelina’s brother James, whom she is known to be incredibly close with, moved in with her and Pitt in the final year of their marriage – which is said to have been the nail in the coffin for their relationship
As the marriage entered its final year, Jolie’s brother James moved in with her and Pitt, having been hired as the chief nanny to their brood.
He was her great support – who can forget their unsettling kiss on the Oscars red carpet in 2000 – and according to a DailyMail.com source, having James around stoked the tensions which ended the marriage.
That insider claimed that relations were so sour between the two men of the house that Pitt used to make James fly economy when the rest of the family were in first class.
And some magazines suggested that the younger children had fallen into the habit of calling James ‘Dad’ by the summer of 2016.
Soon after the split, though, the arrangement was terminated – the reason being that he was simply worn out by the ‘shattering’ job.
Since the breakup, there has been endless court-appointed therapy for the children, who shuttle between their warring parents in their respective LA homes via chauffeur cars, accompanied by security.
Pitt and Jolie’s bitter legal battle nears the end – but war of words still continues
Last week, DailyMail.com revealed Pitt’s alleged last words in their marriage were in new legal court papers.
As he stood on the steps of the private jet that brought him, Jolie and their six children from their home in France to Los Angeles in September 2016, it was claimed he uttered: ‘F*** you. F*** you all.’
For good measure, according to Jolie, he called her a ‘bitch’ and ‘shook her’ by the head and shoulders.
What started out as an altercation apparently between him and one of the children turned — she says — into a physical fight during which he poured beer and wine over his family and injured his wife by throwing himself backwards into a row of seats while she was clinging to his back.
However, in a new legal move, the actress claimed that Pitt was physically and emotionally abusive to her before that point.
Since they split, the two stars have also been fighting in court over the vineyard (seen) that they once owned together
‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s plane trip from France to Los Angeles… this flight marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well,’ her attorneys claim in newly released court papers.
The court papers claim that the actress had evidence of ‘Pitt’s history of physical abuse of the family and control abuse of Jolie,’ and claimed the children continued to experience ‘significant and ongoing post-traumatic stress.’
Attorneys for Jolie refer to a ‘history of abuse, control and cover-ups’ and claim she had ‘testimony, emails, photographs, and other evidence’ which, they said, would show how Pitt tried to conceal his behavior if they came to trial.
The actor’s denials of physical abuse was described in the court documents as ‘gaslighting.’
Additionally, it claimed he exerted ‘coercive’ financial control over her via their dispute over the Miraval wine-making business as their divorce drags on over the past seven years.
Separate legal documents seen by DailyMail.com show that the actress claimed she walked out of talks to sell her part of the vineyard to Pitt for $54 million because of standard non-disparagement clause in his proposed contract for the sale.
She claimed that it was an ‘unconscionable’ attempt by her ex-partner to ‘control her’ after their split.
Pitt’s lawyers told LA Superior Court on Friday that Jolie’s NDA objection was really just a cover story which she cooked-up to ‘rationalize’ her betrayal of Pitt, as first reported by TMZ.
The Fight Club star’s attorneys also claim that she asked for Pitt to sign a broader NDA just six months later as part of their divorce settlement talks.
Part of their motion asks for Jolie to disclose any other NDAs that she entered into with third parties – including her own personal staff.
Pitt’s lawyers argued that disclosure of her NDAs would ultimately discredit Jolie’s arguments over why she abandoned the talks with her estranged husband.
Back in 2020, Pax called Brad a ‘world class a**hole’ and ‘despicable person’ who made his four youngest children ‘tremble in fear’ on his Instagram account
Court documents state: ‘If Jolie conditioned her continued employment of an individual on that individual’s agreement to an NDA covering what they witnessed in her home—including her treatment of her children and Pitt—that would be highly probative of whether she truly believed the provision requested by Pitt was an “unconscionable gag order.”
‘The same is true with respect to any NDA between Jolie and any third party with whom she is in a relationship or who has assisted with the care of the couple’s children.
‘To the extent that Jolie requested this third party’s silence about her family or home life, particularly in a circumstance where there was no business justification, it would speak volumes about whether Jolie actually viewed Pitt’s requested NDA, which was linked to the Miraval business, as the deal-ender she subsequently alleged it to be.’
Previously in March this year, DailyMail.com reported that the couple were finally approaching the finish line in their epic legal war, with an end expected by the summer after the actor reportedly dropped his pursuit seeking shared custody.
While Pitt had originally sought a 50/50 arrangement relating to their six kids, an insider revealed that he was no longer contesting the matter.
Last week, DailyMail.com revealed Pitt’s alleged last words in their marriage were in new legal court papers
That means that Jolie would retain primary physical custody of the children and he would have visitation rights.
One factor in that decision was that much of their brood had ‘aged out’ – only Shiloh, 17, Knox, and Vivienne, both 15, are still under 18 – and Shiloh will pass that milestone in May.
The older children – Maddox 22, Pax, 20, and Zahara, 19 – are thought to have difficult relationships with Brad, as DailyMail.com has previously reported, and as adults, in the eyes of the law, are now not covered by any custody agreements.
Adopted son Pax allegedly hasn’t spoken to the Fight Club alum since the now-infamous private plane fight which ended the marriage, and is said to not even regard Brad as a parent anymore.
Back in 2020, on his private Instagram account, he called Brad a ‘world class a**hole’ and ‘despicable person’ who made his four youngest children ‘tremble in fear,’ as previously revealed by DailyMail.com.
He added in the scathing post, shared on Father’s Day: ‘You time and time and again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person.
‘You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence.
‘You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you’re incapable of doing so.’
In addition, Zahara now goes by ‘Zahara Jolie’ rather than ‘Zahara Jolie Pitt,’ which is her legal name.
