Pax Jolie has been pictured on a particularly wild night out in Hollywood. The son of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was seen leaving a strip club, needing to be supported due to his inebriated state, and he has faced criticism and suggestions that he has joined the stereotypical club of celebrity kids who go off the rails. Pax has not responded to the criticism.

Is the outrage a little over the top and premature? Pax has been called ‘troubled’, with one media outlet speaking of ‘fears’ for him.

After all, is a 21-year-old young man not usually privy to a few wild nights out? He was seen partying at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel before going on to a strip club afterwards and partying to the small hours – much like many young people before him.

He also, admittedly, has had two e-bike accidents in the last year. But again, it seems like a stretch to start calling Pax ‘troubled’. He acting like a lot of young people do – throwing caution to the wind for a few debaucherous acts that make you feel alive. It speaks to our obsession with celebrity culture and their private lives that events like a simple night out are classed as ‘worrying’ behaviour, when young people out of the public eye get to enjoy the same dalliances without any public scrutiny. Pax should be given the space to have a night out without the media jumping on the ‘off the rails’ bandwagon too soon, after all.

Alongside his extreme cycling and avid partying, Pax has a keen interest in photography, having worked with his brother Maddox as a production assistant on Jolie’s film Maria, which depicted the life and final years of real-life opera singer Maria Callas. Both brothers witnessed their mother act and sing in the heartbreaking role.

Jolie told the BBC in an interview: ‘The character has a lot of pain and (my sons) have 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.’

‘So they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug or they would bring me cups of tea.’

Pax also worked as a still photographer on the film. ‘They’ve done that quite a few times, and I think that’s good for them,’ Jolie told The Hollywood Reporter. ‘Pax tends to do stills and he gets brought in, and [director] Pablo (Larraín) was wonderful and recognised that he was good at it.’

She added that she’d ‘never had a set where my family is not allowed to be there’, valuing Pax and Maddox’s ability to see this side of her.

‘You really try to hide from your children how much pain and sadness you carry,’ she added. ‘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.’

Both Pax and Maddox were kept ‘very busy’, with Larraín describing them as ‘good professionals’. During filming, Pax recorded a lot of Jolie’s singing practice ‘so he was with me in my early horrible days’.

‘It’s always good for your children to watch your mum not do something easily, but swear and fight and fail and have to try again,’ Jolie said.‘So that’s an important and beautiful thing.’

She also opened up to The Times about the ways that working on the film helped her to share other difficult topics with both Pax and Maddox.

‘They were able to consider the relationships in the film and the violence,’ she described. ‘Things that sometimes you don’t have the opportunity to discuss with your sons, so I felt fortunate.’

Jolie also fielded questions as to whether she felt the same pressure and isolation as her character Maria felt, and she answered that she didn’t due to the role she has in her children’s lives and the importance she places on motherhood in her life.

‘I don’t feel that because I have family,’ Angelina says, in reference to her six children, which she works hard to stay close to. ‘Maria didn’t have a family, so her work was everything. My work is not everything. Being a parent is everything.’

Pax was adopted by Jolie from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam in 2007 when he was three years old, with her then partner Brad Pitt formally adopting him a year later.

But in the wake of the former Hollywood couple’s rather public and messy split, Pax previously spoke out against his adopted father in a rather cutting Instagram post back in 2020.

He wrote: ‘Happy Father’s Day to this world-class a***hole!

‘You time and time and again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person. You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence. You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you are incapable of doing so.

‘You have made the lives of those closest to me a constant hell. You may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but the truth will come to light someday.

‘So, Happy Father’s Day, you f***ing awful human being!’

Pax’s words about Pitt were posted to his private Instagram story but soon shared with the media. Pitt never publicly responded to Pax’s post.

Perhaps he should be granted the privacy on nights out that he wasn’t granted when it comes to his relationship with Pitt.