Brad Pitt's Personal Life

Marriage to Jennifer Aniston

Pitt dated actress Gwyneth Paltrow during the 1990s. He met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston in 1998 and married her at an enclosed wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. The couple were adamant that the ceremony would be a private affair and hired hundreds of guards to block out any attempts of invasion by the paparazzi. Only one media picture was ever released of the wedding. Not long after the wedding, Pitt sued Damiani International, the company which made the wedding ring he gave Jennifer Aniston, for selling replica "Brad and Jennifer" rings. According to Pitt, the ring was his design and was to be exclusive. Under the settlement reached in January 2002, Pitt will design jewelry for Damiani that Aniston will model in ads, and the company will stop selling the copies.

Their separation was announced on January 7, 2005. Aniston filed for a divorce on March 25 the same year. The divorce was finalized on October 2, 2005. The troubled marriage inspired Brad Pitt to cooperate with Steven Klein for a photoshoot entitled "Domestic Bliss" for the July 2005 edition of W magazine. The spread showed Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a 1963 married couple with children who were experiencing differences in an era where he believed the importance of maintaining a "facade" was becoming complicated.

Relationship with Angelina Jolie

After the end of his marriage to Jennifer Aniston, he and Angelina Jolie were involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal in which she was the "other woman" who caused the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. They both deny that it happened during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. In an interview with Ann Curry in June 2005, Angelina Jolie explained:
"To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." While Jolie and Pitt never publicly commented about the nature of their relationship, speculations continued throughout 2005. The first intimate paparazzi photos emerged 9 April 05 (and were reported to have cost $500,000), one month after Aniston had filed for divorce. They show Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer Jolie and Pitt were seen together with increasing frequency and most of the entertainment media considered them a couple, dubbing them "Brangelina". Two months later Brad and Angelina posed as a married couple for the July 2005 W magazine.
Pitt grew close to Jolie during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. In July 2005 he accompanied Jolie to Ethiopia, where Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt Zahara together. In December 2005 it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie's two children as his (as part of legal requirements), classified advertisements in the Los Angeles paper Daily Commerce announcing the name change request. On January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request. The children's legal surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt".

On January 11, 2006 Jolie confirmed to People magazine that she was pregnant with Pitt's child and thereby confirmed their relationship for the first time in public. On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter named Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, at night at the Cottage Medi-Clinic Hospital in Swakopmund, Namibia. Shiloh was born by a scheduled cesarean section, due to breech presentation, and Pitt was there to cut her umbilical cord. The couple's Los Angeles obstetrician was assisted by local staff. Shiloh, according to a long-standing translation from the Bible, has come to mean "the peaceful one", and is in actuality a masculine noun.

Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter will have a Namibian passport while speaking to local journalists. Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these extremely valuable snapshots. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide – the most expensive celebrity image of all time. All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Jolie and Pitt. On July 26, 2006 Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it is the first infant re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds. In an August 2006 survey, 41 percent of the participating 18- to 24-year-old American adults correctly identified that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie named their baby Shiloh.

The Jolie-Pitt children

Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt (originally Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie) adopted at 7 months old on 10 March 2002. He was born on August 5, 2001 as Rath Vibol in Cambodia and he initially lived in a local orphanage in Battambang. Maddox's name is Celtic in origin, usually translated as "beneficent." His middle name is Khmer for "life" and is borne by a member of the Cambodian royal family, Prince Sisowath Chivan Monirak. Jolie calls him "Mad". Maddox has gained a considerable celebrity and appears regularly in the tabloid media; he was named the "cutest celebrity kid" and he is known for this Mohawk hairstyle.

Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt was born on November 29, 2003 as Pham Quang Sang. On March 2, 2007, Vu Duc Long (head of Vietnam's international adoption department) confirmed that Jolie has filed papers to adopt a child from Vietnam. The adoption process is expected to "take a few months". On March 16, 2007, Jolie went to Vietnam (with Maddox) to get her new son. Since the Vietnam orphanage does not allow non married couples to adopt, Jolie adopted as a single parent.

Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt (originally Zahara Marley Jolie), adopted at 6 months old on 6 July 2005. She was born on January 8, 2005 as Tena Adam (her mother died from AIDS. Zahara does not have AIDS. Zahara's birth father is not known.) and adopted on 6 July 2005 from the Wide Horizons For Children orphanage in Addis Ababa. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara had to spend time in a hospital for salmonella intestinal infection as well as dehydration and malnutrition. Jolie stated that "she was six months and not nine pounds. Her skin, you could squeeze it, it stuck together". Zahara's name means "flower" in Swahili; middle name "Marley" is from late Jamaican reggae superstar Bob Marley. Zahara's nickname is "Zee".
Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born at night (Namibian local time) on May 27, 2006 at Cottage Medi-Clinic Hospital in Swakopmund, Namibia. Shiloh was born by a scheduled cesarean section, due to breech presentation, and Pitt was there to cut her umbilical cord. The couple's Los Angeles obstetrician, Jason Rothbart, M.D., was assisted by local staff. Shiloh, according to a long-standing translation from the Bible, has come to mean "the peaceful one"; middle name Nouvel is named after Jean Nouvel, one of Pitt's favourite architects. The family divides their time between Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Life in New Orleans

In an interview with the Times-Picayune, while filming The curious case of Benjamin Button, Pitt said "I can't describe why we're allowed to live a more normal life (in New Orleans)". He went on to say "Living in the French Quarter is a thrill for us," he said. "We have some semblance of real family life. People have been very, very gracious with us. If we're on the front deck, people go by and say, 'Hi.' Then they go on their way, very friendly."

In popular culture

In 1995, Pitt was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history. Pitt has also twice been named the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.

Pitt is also prominently featured in the December 2006 Art Issue of Vanity Fair. Pitt appears on the cover in nothing but a pair of white boxers. The cover promotes an article on the Robert Wilson video portraits, a production of LAB HD that includes numerous celebrities and noted personalities. This cover has drawn criticism from Pitt because although he had signed a release for the image, he did not expect it to end up on the cover of Vanity Fair more than a year later. The video portrait, which represents Pitt’s first effort in avant-garde cinema, was exhibited at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

In May 2007, Pitt was spotted with a tattoo on his inner left forearm: the outline of Otzi the Iceman, who was found in an Italian glacier in 1991. Experts say that Otzi's (or Oetzi) historic body, Europe's oldest natural human mummy, was preserved in the ice in around 3300 BC.[36]