Jolie: Kids Brought My 'Fighting Spirit' Back After
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- Angelina Jolie said her 'fighting spirit is finally back' after being 'taken down' by her divorce from Brad Pitt, crediting her children — 'almost all 18' — with encouraging her to 'get out and do things.'
- Jolie revealed she had quit acting before her divorce to focus on directing and international work, but returned because it was the only way 'to be home more and for short periods of time being away or to make a good amount of money.'
- 'Couture' writer-director Alice Winocour wrote the role with Jolie in mind, citing Jolie's 'punk spirit and punk energy and raw energy' and her experience as a director navigating personal upheaval.
- Jolie said a mastectomy scene in the film — in which co-star Vincent Lindon's doctor character outlines incision lines on her chest — brought back memories of her own health journey after her 2013 New York Times op-ed revealed she carried the BRCA1 gene and underwent a preventive double mastectomy.
- Jolie said she raises her children 'almost preparing them for my absence,' noting her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died at 56 and she has 'never met' her grandmother, who also died of the disease.
- 'Couture' co-stars Ella Rumpf as a makeup artist and South Sudanese model Anyier Anei as a newcomer to Paris, with Winocour describing the film as about 'the solidarity' between women who 'bare scars' to each other; the film hits theaters June 26.
Why it matters: Jolie has been largely private since her 2016 split from Brad Pitt, making this one of her most candid public remarks about the divorce's toll. Her disclosure that she quit acting pre-split and returned for income and flexibility reframes her recent filmography as financial necessity, not creative choice. The 'Couture' role also marks the first time she has directly played a character whose cancer arc mirrors her own BRCA1-driven preventive mastectomy and her mother's death at 56.
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