NEW YORK: Angelina Jolie has opened up about her split from Brad Pitt, confessing to having “the hardest time” and claiming to have spent months as a homemaker, doing dishes and cleaning up dog poop.
Jolie, 42, filed for divorce last September, citing irreconcilable differences. She accused her Oscar-winning ex of hitting their teenage son on a flight from France to Los Angeles, sparking tabloid gossip and an FBI probe.
The 53-year-old was cleared by the FBI and social workers and wants joint legal and physical custody of Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 11, and twins Vivienne and Knox, nine, while Jolie is demanding sole guardianship.
Jolie told Vanity Fair that “things got bad” in the summer of 2016.
“It’s just been the hardest time, and we’re just kind of coming up for air,” she told the magazine, shortly after moving into a $25 million, six-bedroom, 10-bathroom home with her children in the Los Angeles neighborhood Los Feliz.
She sought to portray herself as focused on homemaking in the aftermath of the split despite a legendarily itinerant life which has seen her buy homes and travel with her children all over the world.
“I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes,” she said.
“I’ve been trying for nine months to be really good at just being a homemaker and picking up dog poop and cleaning dishes and reading bedtime stories. And I’m getting better at all three,” she told the magazine.
Having joked to her youngest son Knox about pretending to be normal, Jolie recounted with pride that he replied: “Who wants to be normal? We’re not normal. Let’s never be normal.”
She also said she had been determined to shield the children.
“I do not want my children to be worried about me. I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them.”
Pitt admitted in his first post-split interview in May that heavy drinking contributed to the breakdown of his marriage, and said he was now a teetotaler. He and Jolie had been a couple since 2004, and got married in 2014.
Jolie, who underwent a double mastectomy and removal of her ovaries in 2013 to prevent an aggressive form of cancer that killed her mother, grandmother and aunt, also told Vanity Fair that she had developed Bell’s palsy.
Acupuncture, she said, led to a full recovery.
The actress won an Oscar in 2000 for portraying a young woman with psychiatric problems in “Girl, Interrupted.” Her most recent project was to direct “First They Killed My Father” about the Cambodian genocide.
Jolie admits to ‘hardest time’ after Pitt split
Jolie admits to ‘hardest time’ after Pitt split
Fans bid farewell to Japan’s only pandas
TOKYO: Panda lovers in Tokyo said goodbye on Sunday to a hugely popular pair of the bears that are set to return to China, leaving Japan without the beloved animals for the first time in half a century.
Loaned out as part of China’s “panda diplomacy” program, the distinctive black-and-white animals have symbolized friendship between Beijing and Tokyo since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1972.
Some visitors at Ueno Zoological Gardens were left teary-eyed as they watched Japan’s only two pandas Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao munch on bamboo.
The animals are expected to leave for China on Tuesday following a souring of relations between Asia’s two largest economies.
“I feel like seeing pandas can help create a connection with China too, so in that sense I really would like pandas to come back to Japan again,” said Gen Takahashi, 39, a Tokyo resident who visited the zoo with his wife and their two-year-old daughter.
“Kids love pandas as well, so if we could see them with our own eyes in Japan, I’d definitely want to go.”
The pandas’ abrupt return was announced last month after Japan’s conservative premier Sanae Takaichi hinted Tokyo could intervene militarily in the event of any attack on Taiwan.
Her comment provoked the ire of Beijing, which regards the island as its own territory.
The 4,400 lucky winners of an online lottery took turns viewing the four-year-old twins at Ueno zoo while others gathered nearby, many sporting panda-themed shirts, bags and dolls to celebrate the moment.
Mayuko Sumida traveled several hours from the central Aichi region in the hope of seeing them despite not winning the lottery.
“Even though it’s so big, its movements are really funny-sometimes it even acts kind of like a person,” she said, adding that she was “totally hooked.”
“Japan’s going to be left with zero pandas. It feels kind of sad,” she said.
Their departure might not be politically motivated, but if pandas return to Japan in the future it would symbolize warming relations, said Masaki Ienaga, a professor at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and expert in East Asian international relations.
“In the future...if there are intentions of improving bilateral ties on both sides, it’s possible that (the return of) pandas will be on the table,” he told AFP.
