Angelina Jolie has shared a rare insight into her relationship with her daughters, revealing that watching them grow into young women has prompted her to reconnect with parts of herself she thought she had lost.
The 51-year-old stars in the upcoming drama Couture, playing American filmmaker Maxine Walker, whose life is thrown into turmoil after she receives a breast cancer diagnosis while working in Paris during Fashion Week.
Speaking about the deeply personal themes explored in the film, Angelina reflected on the questions she is asking herself in this new stage of life in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
“Oh, completely,” she said when asked whether her perspective had changed since she was younger, before adding: “Completely and maybe I’ve come around to being a little bit more the person I used to be.”
Angelina, who shares six children with ex-husband Brad Pitt – Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 17-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne – said her daughters have played an unexpected role in that rediscovery.
“I’m discovering something now that my daughters are older,” Angelina said. “They’re talking to me as young women, and I’m seeing what I want for them. I’m seeing what I don’t want them to lose and what I want them to hold on to. And it’s kind of reminding me what I may have lost.”
© Penske Media via Getty ImagesThe Maleficent star explained that she wants her girls to retain their “strength and openness and softness and faith and ferocity” as they build their own lives.
“I think in some way they’re bringing me back to my old self,” she continued. “My desire for them to have all of the strength and openness and softness and faith and ferocity is reminding me.”
Angelina added that her children are now making room for her to be more than simply their mother.
© Getty Images“I think they kind of want me now to not just be ‘Mom.’ There’s a different room for me to be that woman again, that’s not just a mom.”
The subject carries particular weight in Couture, which follows Maxine as she navigates illness without allowing it to become the sole definition of who she is.
“This was a part of continuing to live all aspects, to live to your last breath, right?” Angelina said. “And not to start living only as a patient.”
© GC ImagesThe actress also made a rare revelation about her own romantic life, admitting: “To be candid, I haven’t dated since I divorced a decade ago. “So I kind of get in my head that that aspect of me is not centered in my life if I’m focusing on my children, my family.”
Playing Maxine helped her consider the possibility that motherhood and womanhood do not have to exist separately.
“It took me a second to kind of say, well, she can also love her daughter and be dedicated to her daughter and also need this as a woman and receive this as a woman,” she said.
For Angelina, the film’s message appears to have resonated far beyond the screen. “So yes, things are changing, but in a way I didn’t expect,” she said. “I’m thinking I have to live again. Be free again.”
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