Angelina Jolie has been trying to divorce Brad Pitt for 8 years. Now she wants to quit Hollywood.

Angelina Jolie was born and bred in Los Angeles.

Now, she wants to leave.

This month, the Oscar winner said that due to her ongoing legal battles with Brad Pitt, she has been unable to leave LA. But it is high on her wishlist.

"It's part of what happened after my divorce. I lost the ability to live and travel as freely. I will move when I can," she told WSJ Magazine in a December 2023 interview.

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 and ever since, the exes have been embroiled in court battles, disputing everything from their shared winery to the custody of their six children.

A Grazia 'insider' reiterated her desire to move in a December 15 report about Jolie's 'for now' family base. She and her children (although Maddox, 22, and Zahara, 18, the two eldest, have left home for college) purchased a home – which used to be owned by director Cecil B DeMille – in the LA area of Los Feliz in 2022. 

It is a celeb-friendly area, where they can count Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart as neighbours.

But it is not where Jolie wants to spend the rest of her life, Grazia's source said.

Jolie told WSJ Magazine her hometown was "a shallow place".

"Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So you seek authenticity," she said.

Jolie is the daughter of actor Jon Voight, and has been around the bright lights of Hollywood her entire life. While her father continues to act well into his 80s (he has three 2024 films in post-production), Jolie has notably taken a step back from acting in line with the timing of her divorce.

She has appeared in just five films since 2016. She is currently filming her next, a biopic, Maria, about opera singer Maria Callas in which she plays the title role.

Angelina Jolie and her children Maddox, Vivienne, Knox, Shiloh and Zahara in 2021. Image: Getty. 

"I wouldn't be an actress today," she told WSJ. "When I was starting out, it wasn't as much of an expectation to be as public, to share so much."

Also in her WSJ Magazine interview, to promote her fashion collection, the 48-year-old shared how her divorce affected her physically, saying that it had affected the muscles in her face. 

"My body reacts very strongly to stress," Jolie said. "My blood sugar goes up and down. I suddenly had Bell's palsy six months before my divorce."

Jolie takes solace in spending as much time as she can with her six children – Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, Pax and twins Knox and Vivienne.

"We had to heal," Jolie shared, referring to her life post-divorce from Pitt. "There are things we needed to heal from."

These days, Jolie says that when she's in Los Angeles she "doesn't really have a social life", instead preferring to surround herself with her kids. "We're seven very different people, which is our strength," she said.

"They are the closest people to me and my life, and they’re my close friends."

This sentiment echoes something the actor said in another interview with Vogue in September, saying, "I'm not really somebody that has girlfriends."

Jolie's latest interview comes on the back of an old Instagram post from Pax Jolie-Pitt resurfacing, in which he called out his estranged dad. "Happy Father’s Day to this world-class a**hole!! You time and time again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person," he shared in 2020.

Listen to the episode of The Spill on why Brad Pitt's kids have turned on him. Post continues after podcast.

This month, Zahara also sent her father a message when she revealed during a college sorority initiation performance that she doesn't use his surname anymore 

Jolie and Pitt started their romance after starring together in 2005 action movie, Mr and Mrs Smith. Pitt was rather awkwardly still married to Jennifer Aniston at the time with the couple divorcing in 2005. 

Brangelina would go on to date for a decade before they got married in 2014 but they divorced just two years later.

During the court proceeding following the divorce, Jolie described a 2016 incident in court documents when Pitt was physically abusive toward her and two of their children. 

In August of this year, Jolie and Pitt finally settled their battle over their winery.  

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This article was originally published on December 6, 2023 and has been updated.

Feature image: Getty.