Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Open Up About Life at Home
— -- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie may be Hollywood's most high-profile couple, but at home, to their brood of six, they are simply mom and dad.
"We wake up, we make breakfast. In our domestic life, we’re mom and dad," Jolie, 40, told the Wall Street Journal magazine, which selected her as this year's entertainment-film innovator. "And often we’re dorky mom and dad, which the kids find ridiculous."
In the extensive interview, the Pitts opened up about their life at home and how Jolie's role as mother is her most important one. Their children, who range in age from 7 to 14, are home-schooled by three teachers who are on duty during the daytime. But at nights and weekends, the two of them manage the household mostly on their own.
"When Angie has a day off, the first thing she does is get up and take the kids out," Pitt, 50, told the magazine. "This is the most important ‘to do’ of the day. No matter how tired she might be, she plans outings for each and all. She has an incredible knack for inventing crazy experiences for them, something new, something fresh. I may be the bigger goof of the pair, but she invents the stage."
More than anything, Jolie wants to be there for her kids, which is why she made the decision to have a preventative mastectomy and her ovaries removed after learning she has a genetic mutation that puts her at an abnormally high risk for both breast and ovarian cancer, in addition to a family history of both.
"I’ll tell you this about her surgeries: Once the decision was made, she was on the operating table two weeks later," her husband revealed.
"You have to understand that this is a woman who never knew she’d make it to 40," Pitt said. "This is a woman who had watched her mother, aunt and grandmother become sick and eventually succumb, all at an early age. Her drive, her absolute value in herself, is defined by the impact she can have during her time here -- for her kids and for the underprivileged and those suffering injustices."
Touching on her experience with her own mother, who died in 2007, after a long battle with ovarian cancer, Jolie said, "I want to make sure my kids are never worried about me. Even if I’m going through something, I make sure they are very aware that I’m totally fine.”
“I’ll stop and make a joke, I talk to them. I never, ever want them to have that secret worry and feel that they have to take care of me."
