Like all parents, Angelina Jolie is a work in progress.
Jolie, 46, is the mother of six children: Maddox, 20, Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 15, and 13-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox, whom she shares with Brad Pitt. The “Eternals” actress dishes on the lessons of motherhood in a new interview.
“I’m that mom that if I see your rebellious spirit, it warms me. And I think, Good for you, you got fire,” Jolie tells People for the publication’s 2021 “Kindness” issue. “I’m not a perfect parent by any means.”
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“Every day I feel like I’m more aware of everything I don’t do right. And I’m pretty tough on myself because I feel often, Am I doing the right thing? Did I say the right thing?”
Jolie is just scratching the surface of who her children are.
“I am curious about all the different aspects of who they are. And I want to be there to support and develop all the different aspects of who they are,” she says. “It’s being excited to figure out: who is this person you live with? To separate yourself from your desires for that person.”
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“I have six very individual human beings in my home. I am so excited about all the different feelings and curiosities that they go through. Why wouldn’t you be? We’re supposed to help them figure out who they are. And you can’t figure out who they are if you don’t enthusiastically develop with them.”
What Jolie knows, however, is that they’re “pretty great people,” she gushes. “And because there’s so many of them, I think they’ve had a very significant effect on each other. It’s not like I’m the head of anything. I’m very honest with my kids. And I’m very human with my kids.”