In a Vanity Fair interview, the actress and director opened up about her difficult past year, revealing that she had developed Bell's palsy. Jolie says she has been focusing on "becoming a better mom."
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While Brad Pitt had discussed his alcohol problems and the end of "Brangelina" in a GQ interview last May, Angelina Jolie had kept quiet about the famous couple's split after filing for divorce in September 2016 - until now.
She openly discussed her hardships in a Vanity Fair interview released on Wednesday.
She says she's been focusing on household chores to deal with her new situation: "I've been trying for nine months to be really good at just being a homemaker and picking up dog poop and cleaning dishes and reading bedtime stories," she told the magazine.
"It's just been the hardest time, and we're just kind of coming up for air," she added. The 42-year-old actress, filmmaker, humanitarian and mother of six recently moved into a $25 million, six-bedroom, 10-bathroom home in Los Angeles.
As a UN Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie's family was used to a globe-trotting lifestyle with Pitt. In the Vanity Fair interview, she recounted once joking to her youngest son Knox about how they were now pretending to be normal, to which he replied, "'Who wants to be normal? We're not normal. Let's never be normal.'"
My picture of the week | Brangelina and the burden of fame
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Dealing with health challenges
Jolie revealed different health problems she has also been dealing with since her split from Brad. She developed hypertension, and Bell's palsy - a weakness in facial muscles that can cause one side of the face to droop slightly. She said she recovered thanks to acupuncture.
The star has been open about her health challenges in the past. She wrote in the New York Times in 2013 about her preventative double mastectomy to prevent an aggressive form of cancer that killed many women in her family. She also had her ovaries removed two years later.
Although she is not currently working on a film, Jolie is promoting her latest work as a director, an adaption of her friend Loung Ung's 2000 memoir, "First They Killed My Father."
It is about the genocide in Cambodia that claimed Ung's parents and siblings. More than 1 million people died under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s.
Angelina Jolie's film "First They Killed My Father" premiered in Cambodia in February and will be released globally and on Netflix in September.
The rise and fall of Brangelina
After over ten years as one of Hollywood's most powerful couples, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have split. DW takes a look at their relationship from its steamy on-set beginnings to its surprising, sudden end.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Universal Pictures
Romance on the set of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"
In 2004, Pitt and Jolie fell in love on the set of action comedy "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." The film made the relationship between the two actors public but stirred controversy as Pitt was still married to actress Jennifer Aniston at the time.
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Brangelina's large family
The couple has a total of six children. Jolie adopted her Cambodian-born son Maddox and Ethiopian-born daughter Zahara prior to her relationship with Pitt. In 2006, Jolie gave birth to their daughter Shiloh in Namibia. One year later, the couple adopted a Vietnamese-born son named Pax. In 2008, Jolie gave birth to twins Vivienne and Knox in the French city of Nice.
Image: picture-alliance/abaca/E. Pantaleo
Chateau de Jolie-Pitt
Pitt and Jolie relocate to the Chateau Miraval, a vineyard estate in southern France in 2008. The couple would later hold their wedding ceremony at the home.
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Marriage delay
Pitt said he and Jolie would not get married until "everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," in an interview with Esquire in 2006. He repeated this statement in 2009 and 2011. Marriage equality was finally achieved in the US in 2015, one year after the couple's marriage.
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Charitable couple
Pitt and Jolie started a foundation to focus on supporting aid organizations and has donated millions of dollars to charities such as Doctors Without Borders. In 2012, Jolie was named a special envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Image: Getty Images/T. Stoddart
Brave announcement
In 2013, Jolie announced that she underwent a voluntary double mastectomy as a precautionary measure against breast cancer. She urged other women to take preventative measures. "I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive," she wrote at the time.
Image: Getty Images/J. Merritt
French chateau wedding
Pitt and Jolie finally married in 2014 in a nondenominational ceremony in southern France. The couple's children helped to design the patterns on Jolie's wedding dress. The children also participated in the ceremony as ring bearers, flower girls, and escorts down the aisle.
Image: Imago/Levine-Roberts
Foreboding final film
The couple co-stared in the 2015 movie "By the Sea," a drama about the disintegration of a marriage. Jolie wrote and directed the film which received less a less than stellar response from critics. She filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016.
