Angelina Jolie Says Her 'Fighting Spirit Is Finally Back' After Messy Brad Pitt Divorce: 'I Lost It for a Bit'

Angelina Jolie is feeling more and more like herself, almost a decade after her split from Brad Pitt.

She made a rare comment about her personal life in an interview with Variety, which was published on June 17.

"I think my fighting spirit is finally back," she said. "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."

Jolie and Pitt famously got together in 2005 after meeting on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. They married in 2014 but filed for divorce just two years later.

They had six children together Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 17-year-old Knox and Vivienne.

"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," Jolie added. "They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot."

"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," she concluded.

Their children have appeared to take sides in Jolie and Pitt's messy breakup.

Maddox and Shiloh both filed legal proceedings to have "Pitt" dropped from their last names.

TMZ reported Zahara and Vivienne have both dropped the name informally. Vivienne removed it from the playbill of a Broadway production she worked on.

The divorce took eight years to settle. After the settlement was announced in 2024, Jolie's legal representation released a statement to People addressing the split.

"More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt. She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family," it read. "This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over."

Lawyers noted that Jolie does not speak poorly of her ex-husband "publicly or privately."

"She’s been trying hard to be light after a dark time," the statement added.

Jolie quit acting before her divorce from Pitt, deciding to take on more director roles and focus on her humanitarian work abroad.

"I was focusing on directing, and I thought I’d be doing my international work," she said. "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]."

Jolie has made a triumphant return to acting after her role as legendary opera singer Maria Callas in the 2025 film Maria earned her wide critical acclaim.

The Oscar-winning actress will return to movies in 2026 in the drama Couture, which she produced and stars in. It is directed and written by Alice Wincour, who says the movie encapsulates being "stronger together."

"The film is about also the solidarity that women who bear scars have…sometimes you tell you the most personal thing you have to a stranger," she wrote. "What we wanted to show was this fragile moment between human beings."