In Hollywood, image is everything. And over the last ten years, Angelina Jolie has carefully crafted herself to come across as a modern day Mother Theresa with her deservedly lauded charity work.
But much of that public perception of her is being jeopardized by her aggressive strategy in handling her divorce from husband Brad Pitt, according to an exhaustive Page Six profile of the case.
Through an interim arrangement, Pitt currently gets visitation with Maddox, 17, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 12 and twins Vivienne and Knox, 10, for four hours every other day and 12 hours over the weekend. (Though Maddox can decide exactly how much time he spends with his father.)
But a source close to the family told The New York Post that Jolie’s camp has been using the media to smear Pitt in an effort to gain public sympathy since the stars announced their divorce in September 2016.
“She filed for divorce out of the blue, then people connected to her floated information to the media that [Pitt] had punched one of their kids on a flight in a drunken, high rage,” a source told the newspaper, referring to the TMZ reoprt that Jolie told a social worker that Pitt had struck their son Maddox, then 15, during a flight on a private jet.
Investigations by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and the FBI in 2016 cleared Pitt of any wrongdoing.
“Angelina kicked the s–t out of Brad at the beginning,” the source told The Post. “Then she tried to make other threats and said he was going to be arrested. She really started a whispering campaign against Brad that was demonstrably false.”
More recently, there have been gossip glossy reports painting Pitt as a “deadbeat dad.” But his lawyers say that Pitt loaned Jolie $8 million so she could buy a $19 million home and has paid roughly $1.3 million in child support, according to The Post.
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