Angelina Jolie: "You don't know who your children are until they show you who they are"
The Oscar winning actress’ six kids with Brad Pitt are following in her footsteps—but, in an unexpected way
The Oscar winner has always been known for encouraging her kids to celebrate and pursue their dreams.
But in an interview with BBC, we see just how much she values cultivating her kids’ individuality, even if it means they go down paths totally different from her own—or, her husband Brad Pitt’s.
The supportive mum of Maddox (14), Pax (12), Zahara (11), Shiloh (10), Vivienne (7), and Knox (7), opened up about her kids’ lives, their fascination with various cultures, and how none of them seem to be taking an interest in following in her footsteps—when it comes to acting.
“None of my kids want to be actors,” she revealed to BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. “They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside.”
“Pax loves music and deejaying,” she shares. “And it’s been very interesting.”
While, her eldest, Maddox has shown an interest in being behind the camera. “Mad’s interested in editing,” reveals Jolie. “We’ll see, they’re all very young.”
Angelina Jolie as a mum is just as free-spirited as when she was single: “They’re just becoming whoever they want to be…”
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Ultimately, she leaves it up to them to find what they love to do and pursue it wholeheartedly.
“You don’t know who your children are until they show you who they are,” she says, simply. “They’re just becoming whoever they want to be.”
Though the Jolie-Pitt kids’ interests vary, they can all agree on one thing—their love for languages.
“All the kids are learning different languages,” Jolie told BBC. “I asked them what languages they wanted to learn and Shi’s learning Khmer, which is a Cambodian language. Pax is focusing on Vietnamese. Mad has taken to German and Russian. Z’s speaking French. Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic. And Knox is learning sign language.”
This passion for other cultures outside of Hollywood possibly started because of their travels with their mum, who is not just an iconic actress, but a special envoy to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Though she’s accomplished much in and out of Hollywood, Jolie reveals that she still has one dream—to take her six kids around the world. “It’s a bit of my dream,” she muses. “They’re interested in other cultures.”
But it’s not just other countries’ languages and cultures that Angelina wishes her kids to learn, she wants to educate them about their resilience and other admirable qualities.
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“We think of the [refugees] who are going through these difficult situations, but we also talk about their resilience and their strength and we admire them,” said Jolie. “And so they’re heroes in my house.”
One thing she does discourage, though, is looking upon refugees (and people with similar plights) with pity. Instead, she wants her kids to “have so much admiration and respect for people suffering different realities and surviving them with such grace and dignity.”
