Angelina Jolie is speaking out for the first time about her public divorce from Brad Pitt and what the last year has done to her health.
“It’s just been the hardest time, and we’re just kind of coming up for air,” Jolie, 42, told magazine Vanity Fair in its latest cover story.
Jolie and Pitt called it quits after 12 years together in September. And while the split came as a shock to many, the actress admits that their marriage began to crumble while filming her latest directorial effort First They Killed My Father in Cambodia last summer. “Things got bad,” says Jolie. “I didn’t want to use that word…things became ‘difficult.’”
In the interview, Jolie also reveals that she developed Bell’s Palsy last year, a result of damage to facial nerves, causing one side of her face to droop. “Sometimes women in families put themselves last,” she says, “until it manifests itself in their own health.” After having a preventative double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery and later her ovaries removed, she says she immediately went into menopause.
Joking about how the past year has taken a toll on her, she quips, “I can’t tell if it’s menopause or if it’s just been the year I’ve had.”
As for her family, Jolie plainly states that their globe-trotting lifestyle “was not the problem” that led to her divorce.
“[Our lifestyle] was not in any way a negative,” she says. “That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children . . . They’re six very strong-minded, thoughtful, worldly individuals. I’m very proud of them.”