Angelina Jolie Reveals What She 'Lost' After Brad Pitt Divorce & Who Helped Her Get It Back

No breakup is easy, but when there’s a messy divorce, millions of dollars, and six kids in the middle, everything becomes a whole lot more complicated. That’s exactly what Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt went through for eight years before finalizing their divorce in 2024 . So, of course, it’s no surprise that those involved have been slowly rediscovering themselves and healing from everything that went down. In a June 17 interview with Variety , Jolie looked back at some of those difficult times, and gave a sweet shoutout to her kids with Pitt, Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 21, Shiloh, 19, and 17-year-old kids Knox and Vivienne, who helped her through it. “I think my fighting spirit is finally back,” she told the outlet. “I lost it for a bit.” “I got kind of taken down a little bit and it’s coming back in large part thanks to my children, who are now older, and encouraging it,” she explained. RELATED: Angelina Jolie Reacts To Son Knox Dropping F-Bombs In His Graduation Speech Before Viral Fight Video Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, Vivian Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Zahara Jolie-Pitt and Knox Jolie-Pitt Michael Buckner/PMC “My kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me traveling the world, they want me to get out and do things,” she said. “They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot.” She continued, “I think they’re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn’t felt as free to do.” Also in the interview, Jolie looked back at her career decisions in the past, including her break from acting before her divorce in 2016. “I had kind of quit acting before my divorce,” she said. “I was focusing on directing, and I thought I’d be doing my international work. But then, suddenly, the only way to be home more and for short periods of time, being away, or to make a good amount of money, was to go back to acting. I was only taking things that were short or close by, or I could take [my children].” Currently, Jolie is gearing up for the premiere of her new movie, Couture , which premieres on June 26, 2026. In it, she plays Maxine, a single mother in the midst of a divorce who’s suddenly diagnosed with breast cancer. Jolie has never been diagnosed with cancer, but opened up about undergoing a preventive double mastectomy in 2013 because she carried the BRCA1 gene. RELATED: Angelina Jolie’s Daughter Shiloh Makes Her K-Pop Music Video Debut With A Discreet Stage Name Prior to the interview, insiders shared insight into how Pitt is doing after the messy divorce as well. Per the sources earlier this week, while he’s “devastated” by the strained relationship he now has with his kids , he’s trying to heal through his relationship with his girlfriend, Ines de Ramon . “Brad is focusing his energy on the parts of his life that feel good right now,” a source t