Angelina Jolie has really laid it on the line in a new cover story for Vanity Fair.
She says, very surprisingly, that she’s reconciled with her father, actor Jon Voight, after a long estrangement.
Jolie tells Evgenia Peretz: “He’s been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time. I had to do a therapy meeting last night and he was just around. He knows kind of the rule—don’t make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.”
This is news because usually it’s Voight who tells the press he’s been in touch with Jolie. But they were truly estranged for many years, particularly during her relationship with and marriage to Brad Pitt. Voight rarely knew any personal info about Angelina unless he heard it from a reporter– adoptions, births, weddings, divorce, etc.
It’s also interesting because in talking about her divorce from Pitt and its effect on their six kids, Jolie references her parents’ divorce.
“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.”
Jolie also tells Peretz that in addition to her other health issues with cancer, she’s suffered from both hypertension and Bell’s Palsy in the last year. “Sometimes women in families put themselves last,” she says, “until it manifests itself in their own health.”
