Angelina Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt and is seeking custody of their six children, TMZ reported yesterday, spelling the end for Brangelina, one of Hollywood’s highest-profile celebrity couples.
According to the entertainment news site, the 41-year-old Jolie filed legal documents on Monday citing irreconcilable differences with Pitt, 52, listing their date of separation as September 15.
Two of the world’s biggest stars, they formed a Hollywood power couple second to none.
The A-listers wed in France in August two years ago, but have been together since 2004 and have six children together, three of whom are adopted.
Jolie is seeking physical custody of the children, with visiting rights for Pitt, according to TMZ, which said she was not seeking spousal support.
Jolie catapulted to stardom with her role in 1999’s Girl, Interrupted, taking home an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her fierce portrayal of a rebellious woman in a mental institution.
The red carpet darling is now better known for her humanitarian work than for her tabloid-ready actions, having served for several years as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
She is also one of the world’s most visible symbols in the battle against cancer, having undergone a double mastectomy and removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent an aggressive form of the disease that killed her mother, grandmother and aunt.
Jolie had been married twice before, to actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.
Pitt was previously married to Friends star Jennifer Aniston.
From a screen debut as a bare-chested pretty boy to the Hollywood top table, with a name that can carry an indie flick or a blockbuster, Brad Pitt has come a long way.
Pitt came into the public eye 25 years ago with a much-talked-about debut as eye-candy in the hit movie Thelma and Louise — and went on to become a household name.
A three-time Oscar nominee for his acting Pitt took home a golden statuette for best picture in 2014 as a producer of 12 Years A Slave.
The Hollywood glory is all a far cry from Pitt’s early days.
Born 48 years ago in a middle-class family in Oklahoma, William Bradley Pitt studied journalism and advertising at the University of Missouri before following thousands of young Americans and heading to Hollywood.
Pitt supported himself with a series of part-time jobs, including as a chauffeur, removal man and even dressing up in a chicken suit to advertise a fast-food chain.
But from 1987 the work started to trickle in, with bit parts in television series Dallas and 21 Jump Street and a few low-budget movies.
After Thelma and Louise secondary roles followed in Kalifornia (1993) and True Romance (1994) and he finally made it as a headliner later that year alongside Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire, and Anthony Hopkins in Legends of the Fall.
If Pitt needed any further affirmation of his talent, he got it with Seven, the acclaimed 1995 thriller in which he played a policemen spun along by a serial killer.
The success continued the following year with Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, in which Pitt was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actor.
The high from that accolade did not last long, however, being followed by two commercial flops in 1997, Seven Years in Tibet and The Devil’s Own with Harrison Ford.
The critics were also less than impressed with his pairing with Julia Roberts in The Mexican and Robert Redford in Spy Game, both in 2001.
But the actor won a new legion of fans alongside Edward Norton in Fight Club (1999), and hit the commercial big time two years later as part of a star-studded cast led by George Clooney with the remake of Ocean’s Eleven.
Pitt’s position and his commercial clout was only strengthened by his 2000 marriage to “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston, which made them one of the hottest couples in the world.
If the symbolism of his playing the unstoppable Achilles in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) was not clear enough, he starred in another box office smash that year (Ocean’s Twelve) before 2005’s Mr and Mrs Smith.
It was while filming the latter movie that Pitt encountered Jolie.
The match-up of two of the world’s sexiest stars was commercial dynamite but did little for his marriage to Aniston.
They announced their split in early 2005.
Jolie with her children.
