Brangelina split: Jolie files for divorce from Pitt, lawyer says

By Jake Coyle and Anthony McCartney, The Associated Press

Brangelina is no more. Angelina Jolie Pitt has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, bringing an end to one of the world’s most star-studded, tabloid headline-generating romances.

Jolie Pitt cited “irreconcilable difference” in divorce papers filed Monday in Los Angeles. She is seeking physical custody of their six children, with visitation rights for Pitt.

An attorney for Jolie Pitt, Robert Offer, said Tuesday that Jolie Pitt’s decision to divorce was made “for the health of the family.” The filing dated the couple’s separation as last Thursday.

Though together for 12 years, Pitt and Jolie Pitt only wed in August 2014. They married privately in the French hamlet of Correns in Provence with their children serving as ring bearers and throwing flower petals. They announced the ceremony days later.

Their children are: 15-year-old Maddox, 12-year-old Pax, 11-year-old Zahara, 10-year-old Shiloh, and 8-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

This is the second marriage for Pitt, who previously wed Jennifer Aniston. It’s the third for Jolie Pitt, who was previously married to Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller.

Their initial romance sparked a tabloid avalanche unlikely any in recent memory. Pitt and Jolie became close while filming 2005’s ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ prompting widespread speculation – consistently denied by couple – that Jolie prompted Pitt’s divorce from Aniston. Pitt and Aniston announced their separation in January 2005.

But after the media upheaval, Jolie Pitt and Pitt settled into their own unique kind of globe-trotting domesticity.

The pair adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. And they sought to direct the glare of their celebrity toward other causes. Jolie Pitt, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, became an outspoken voice for refugees and various causes in Africa, as well as for breast cancer treatment after undergoing a double mastectomy.

Jolie Pitt also launched herself as a film director. Last year, the couple starred together in her ‘By the Sea,’ playing a glamorous couple vacationing together in France while their marriage was on the rocks. It made a mere $538,000 at the box office.

In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press, Jolie Pitt said playing a couple with marital problems was cathartic.

“It almost makes you get past those issues because you can laugh at them,” Jolie Pitt said. “You do a film about bad marriage and you witness that behaviour. You study it, you let it out, you attack each other and then you just want to hold each other and make sure you never behave that way.”

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