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THE COVER STORY of this month’s Vanity Fair features Angelina Jolie speaking very frankly about life as a single mother, the trauma of splitting up from Brad Pitt and the ‘day-to-day’ chaos of raising six kids.

The interview by Evgenia Peretz immediately opens by describing her not as the ‘celestial goddess’, ‘high-and-mighty do-gooder’, ‘intense control freak’ that people perceive Angelina to be, but rather a pretty normal, friendly and chatty mother.

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Similarly, the public perception of her married life did not accurately reflect the reality of it.

Was there anyone who was not surprised and disappointed after the split of ‘Brangelina’?Nobody saw it coming when Jolie filed for divorce for ‘the health of the family’ and announced that she was seeking sole custody of their children.

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The interview portrayed Angelina’s relationship with her kids as pretty typical.

While speaking about her 9-year-old child’s blanket collection she made this humorous remark:

“She has 32 blankets. She is very into her blanket, and she gets very mad if you wash her blanket. She actually said to me the other day, ‘Mom, I can taste my blanket.’ ‘That, honey, is a sign that it really, really needs to be washed.’”

Despite seeming unstoppable in her relationship with Brad Pitt, things became difficult in their relationship.

While working as a director on the film First They Killed My Father, tensions arose within their marriage.

Jolie indicated that for the sake of her children, she didn’t want to discuss her breakup, but at the same time she was adamant on getting her point across.

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She said that her children had ‘been very brave’ and were ‘healing from some… from life, from things in life.’

Herself and Brad Pitt are ‘working towards the same goal’, which is caring about their family, however she does not comment on whether or not their communication has improved.

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She mentioned that she does all of her crying in the shower, so as not to upset her six children.

Her main priority has been protecting her children emotionally, throughout the divorce and throughout her brushes with the threat of ovarian cancer.

I was very  worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me. I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right even when you’re not sure it is.

Two years after her double mastectomy, she received a call from a doctor who believed that her blood levels could potentially suggest cancer.

When she found out that she was safe this time, she immediately booked an appointment to have her ovaries removed, a measure to keep her with her kids for as long as possible.

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Despite entering menopause, noticing a lot more gray hairs and a lot of increased strength, she says she feels like ‘more of a woman’.

I feel like I’m being smart about my choices, and I’m putting my family first, and I’m in charge of my life and my health. I think that’s what makes a woman complete.

In the last year she has also developed Bell’s palsy. She said:

Sometimes women in families put themselves last, until it manifests itself in their own health.

She treated the condition with acupuncture.

Jolie also discussed how she was affected by travelling to Cambodia to shoot for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. 

Soon she will release her Netflix original biographical film, First They Killed My Father, about the Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung, who recounts the horrors she suffered under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

Her interest in Cambodia was sparked by her trip to Cambodia for the production of Tomb Raider where ‘Jolie who had grown up in privileged bubbles in Los Angeles and New York, witnessed what real suffering looked like: poverty, the loss of limbs from land mines, a generation of relatives wiped out.’

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It was here that she was inspired to contact the United Nations to become a goodwill ambassador for the High Commissioner for Refugees.

It was also in Cambodia that she adopted her first child Maddox, who she ‘cried and cried’ over when she met him for the first time.

The impact that the country had on her is the clear inspiration for her new movie which is set to release on Netflix this year.

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