It's happened. Angelina Jolie has become Hollywood's 'lonely', single woman.

Angelina Jolie has vanished from glossy magazine covers, from ‘hottest people’ lists and glittery Hollywood events. We’d send out a search party and alert the US authorities… only, we know what’s happened:

The tabloid tide has turned and they’ve washed her right up.

This week, it was reported by CNN that the actor/director/humanitarian and Brad Pitt have been formally granted a dissolution of their marriage. Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016, two years and one month after she wed Pitt, with whom she’d been in a relationship for close to a decade and shares six children.

And with that, Angelina Jolie is legally single at the age of 43. In Hollywood…

We know what happens next. Just ask Jennifer ‘poor Jen’ Aniston, the Friends star who, after three decades in the business and a multitude of professional successes, still has tabloids tripping over themselves to lament the fact that she’s never found a bloke. Because, you know, she’s 50 ‘n’ all.

For Jolie, a similar narrative has already started being strung together. A headline in British tabloid, The Sun, this week reads: "LONELY JOLIE: Inside Angelina Jolie’s ‘lonely life in lockdown’ with her children."

If you believe their source, the Academy Award winner (Girl Interrupted, 2000) is moping around her Los Angeles mansion, because she obviously wants to get back with Brad.

(Side note: Has anyone checked on Brad? First Jennifer, now Ange, he might be 'lonely', too... Oh, wait. Nevermind. Brad Pitt.)

Apparently, Jolie “doesn’t have a lot of friends to talk to”, doesn't date or attend industry parties. Instead, her "days are spent in therapy and she's taken up cookery classes". Which sounds kind of ideal, to be honest.

Mamamia Out Loud discuss the two settings Jennifer Aniston seems to have in the media.

Of course, Angelina Jolie could well be lonely. Being famous, rich, and successful doesn't shield from the pain and grief of ending a relationship, let alone one with the father of your children.

But the risk of perpetuating the 'poor Ange' narrative is that it leaves little room for anything other than pity, that it will mask her triumphs and good works.

After all, the reason Jolie has stepped back a little from Hollywood in 2017 was to "focus on my work with the United Nations” as a Special Envoy for UNHCR. Just last month she delivered the keynote address at the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial. In 2017, she also co-wrote/directed a film for Netflix called, First They Killed My Father, about the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

See, she conceived and created her own content, because that's what it takes to tell the stories studios won't touch; see Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Amy Poehler, et. al.

Meanwhile, her own story, it seems, is all plotted out.