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Angelina Jolie: ‘It’s Strange, I Never Wanted to Have a Baby’

Angelina Jolie arrives for the premiere of DreamWorks Animation and Twentieth Century Fox's "Kung Fu Panda 3" held at TCL Chinese Theatre on January 16, 2016.
Angelina Jolie arrives for the premiere of DreamWorks Animation and Twentieth Century Fox's "Kung Fu Panda 3" held at TCL Chinese Theatre on January 16, 2016.

The mysteries of motherhood. Mom of six Angelina Jolie revealed in a new interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, February 17, that she never envisioned herself raising children. 

But in 2000, she was shooting her blockbuster action flick Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia, and something shifted. “When I first came to Cambodia, it changed me,” the superstar, 40, told the AP. “It changed my perspective. I realized there was so much about history that I had not been taught in school, and so much about life that I needed to understand, and I was very humbled by it.”

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The daughter of actor Jon Voight and late actress Marcheline Bertrand recalled how shooting in Cambodia was so different from L.A., where she felt “a real emptiness” growing up. “That trip triggered my realization of how little I knew and the beginning of my search for that knowledge,” she disclosed.

Angelina Jolie with Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt and Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt in the audience during Nickelodeon's 28th Annual Kids' Choice Awards held at The Forum on March 28, 2015.
Angelina Jolie with Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt and Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt in the audience during Nickelodeon’s 28th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards held at The Forum on March 28, 2015.

It also awakened her desire to be a mom. “It’s strange, I never wanted to have a baby,” she reflected. “I never wanted to be pregnant. I never babysat. I never thought of myself as a mother.” That changed when she was playing with kids at a local school in Cambodia. “It was suddenly very clear to me that my son was in the country, somewhere,” she recalled.

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In 2002, Jolie adopted her eldest, Maddox, now 14. A few years later, she brought home her daughter Zahara, now 11, from Ethiopia. In 2007, she and her then-future husband, Brad Pitt, adopted Pax, now 12, from Vietnam.

The couple, who married in August 2014, also share three biological children: Daughter Shiloh, 9, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 7.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arrive at the AFI FEST 2015.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arrive at the AFI FEST 2015.

Jolie’s love for Cambodia will be expressed in her upcoming work. The actress-turned-director is currently shooting an upcoming Netflix original, First They Killed My Father, which is based on Loung Ung’s memoir. The movie will detail, from a child’s perspective, the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that claimed over 2 million lives back in the 1970s.

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