On being a vixen, and life after Brad Pitt: Highlights from Angelina Jolie’s revealing interview

Angelina Jolie discussed her image as the perennial vixen, and life after splitting from Brad Pitt in a revealing interview to the New York Times, on the eve of her new film, First They Killed My Father’s release.

Each time the subject of her split from Brad Pitt arose, Angelina Jolie would get quiet, according to a new interview published Thursday in the New York Times.

Director Angelina Jolie arrives on the red carpet for the film First They Killed My Father at the Toronto International Film Festival.(REUTERS)

Jolie has been out and about with her six children, promoting her new film as director. While the conversation was supposed to be about First They Killed My Father, the third war film Jolie has made in her four-movie career as director, the elephant in the room couldn’t be avoided.

“It took me a few months to realise that I was really going to have to do it,” said Jolie, about moving out of Pitt’s estate. “That there was going to have to be another base regardless of everything. That there was going to have to be a home. Another home.”

Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, front row from left, Knox Jolie-Pitt, Sareum Srey Moch, middle row from left, Loung Ung, Maddox Jolie-Pitt, Pax Jolie-Pitt, Kimhak Mun, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, Zahara Jolie-Pitt and Angelina Jolie attend a premiere for First They Killed My Father. (Evan Agotini/Invision/AP)

“None of it’s easy. It’s very, very difficult, a very painful situation, and I just want my family healthy,” she said, insisting, as always, that the kids are the priority.

And “they’re getting better,” she said.

According to the NYT piece, the time she spent filming First They Killed My Father, a movie about the horrors of living under Cambodia’s oppressive Khmer Rouge regime told through the eyes of a child, might have been an eye opener with regard to her relationship with Pitt.

Angelina Jolie, left, director/co-writer of the film First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, and co-writer/human rights activist Loung Ung pose for a portrait during the Toronto International Film Festival. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

“Loung (author of the book on which the film is based) had such horrors in her life but also had so much love, and that is why she’s all right today,” Jolie said. “That is something I need to remember.”

Jolie also spoke about her image as the perennial vixen, and that of Pitt’s - his revealing first interview post split further strengthened his down-to-earth vibe.

“I never expect to be the one that everybody understands or likes,” the actor, who at the beginning of her career was considered somewhat of a wild child, said, “And that’s OK, because I know who I am, and the kids know who I am.”

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