Angelina Jolie has opened up about the way in which parents have to hide pain from their children in a new interview, explaining that her eldest sons saw her ‘in pain’ while filming Maria – a new biopic about opera singer Maria Callas that’s set to release next year.

While the Hollywood actor has maintained much of her privacy throughout the now eight-year divorce battle from ex Brad Pitt, with whom she shares six children, the star has given a rare glimpse into the reality of parenting through such emotional difficulty when talking about playing the character Maria with BBC News.

Two of Jolie’s children, Maddox and Pax – who have both dropped ‘Pitt’ from their surname in recent years – worked on set filming Maria to help with production, in assistant director roles. ‘They’ve done that quite a few times, and I think that’s good for them,’ Jolie told The Hollywood Reporter this year. ‘Pax tends to do stills, and he gets brought in, and [Maria director] Pablo [Larrain] was wonderful and recognized that he was good at it.’

Of course, having the children on set for such an emotionally complex story had it’s own challenges. Maria experienced much personal tragedy throughout her life, including domestic abuse, blackmail by her own mother, wartime poverty and near-sightedness that left her nearly blind.

In her BBC News interview, Angelina explains that portraying Maria meant Maddox and Pax saw her in ways she would normally protect them from.

‘The character [Callas] has a lot of pain and they’ve of course seen me go through a lot of things, but they hadn’t experienced me expressing a lot of the pain that usually a parent hides from a child,’ she said. ‘So, they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug, or they would bring me cups of tea.’

Jolie has accused Pitt of physical abuse in court documents, which are accessible to the public, as part of their divorce proceedings. She claims he drunkenly attacked her and the children on a private plane from France to Los Angeles in 2016, saying that he grabbed her by the back of the head, choked one of the children, struck another in the face, and poured beer and red wine on them. She filed for divorce days after. Pitt denies the allegations. The incident was investigated by the FBI in 2016, but authorities chose not to press charges.

Her lawyer has also filed documents to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming that Pitt had a history of physical abuse. ‘While Pitt’s history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s September 2016 plane trip from France to Los Angeles, this flight marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well. Jolie then immediately left him.’

Pitt has acknowledged struggling with alcohol but denies accusations of abuse.
Maria is expected to explore the theme of domestic abuse given the main characters highly publicised relationship with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, which was said to be violent. In Maria’s personal letters (read by biographer Lyndsy Spence – who was given access to the unpublished materials in order to write her latest biography, Cast a Diva: The Hidden Life of Maria Callas) she writes of times when his physical violence threatened her life.

‘There is also disturbing information from the diary of one of her close friends detailing how Onassis drugged her, mostly for sexual reasons – today we would class that as date rape,’ Spence told The Guardian. ‘Her life was full of tragedy, but I wanted to give her her voice.’

Speaking about playing Maria with her children on set, Jolie told The Hollywood reporter, ‘You really try to hide from your children how much pain and sadness you carry. And so, for them to be with you when you’re expressing it at such a level, I think it was the first time they ever heard me cry like that.’

‘They were able to consider the relationships in the film and the violence,’ Jolie added in an interview with The Sunday Times, noting that it prompted her to talk about domestic violence with them more. ‘Things that sometimes you don’t have the opportunity to discuss with your sons, so I felt fortunate.’

With Jolie continuing her press tour for Maria, ahead of its cinema release on the 10th of January, we’re sure to hear more about the filming experience and the challenges of working with your children on set – albeit that Jolie’s children are particularly well-versed in the world of showbiz.

While Jolie recently insisted that none of the children want to be movie stars (‘They’re especially shy, very private people,’ she told E! News), they all already have acting and producing credits on their CVs – with bit parts in Maleficent and voice acting roles in Kung Fu Panda. As well as Maddox and Pax being involved in Maria, Shiloh recently supported production for The Outsiders.