Angelina Jolie Reveals She Became an Actress to Fulfill Her Late Mother’s Dream: ‘It Made Her Happy’

Angelina Jolie may not necessarily be what you’d call a “nepo baby,” but her parents were actors, too. Jon Voight was her father, but her mother was Marcheline Bertrand, a performer who appeared in a handful of movies.

Jolie was close with Bertrand and was devastated when she passed away from cancer in 2007. She was only 56 years old when she died. Jolie often speaks about her mother. Most recently, she talked to W Magazine about the impact Bertrand had on her life when she was a child. Jolie started acting at a young age – she had a small part in her father’s 1982 film Lookin’ To Get Out – and she believes it was the encouragement of her mother that caused her to pursue it as a career.

When W Magazine asked Jolie if she’d always wanted to be an actor, she answered, “I did it in the beginning because it was my mother’s dream. She pursued acting, but by the time my mom was 25, she was divorced with two kids and she decided to focus her life solely on motherhood. She didn’t make me feel like it was a sacrifice—she loved being a stay-at-home mom. But she really wanted me to be an actress.”

Jolie went on, “I don’t remember making the choice. I remember it made my mom happy. My mom was my manager, and we were a team. I always wanted to buy her a house, and I started to pay the bills. When my mom passed, it was harder for me to be an actress because I realized how much of it was for her.”

The Salt actor may have a hugely successful career, but she’s made it clear over the years that she values her motherhood more than her job. Jolie is the mom of six children, three adopted and three biological. These are Maddox, Zahara, Vivienne, Pax, Knox, and Shiloh, and they are all teenagers or adults now. Jolie threw herself into being a mom and it’s her greatest joy in life. “It’s my happiness,” she said while promoting her new film Maria. “You can take everything else away from me. Nothing else matters.”

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But Jolie is doing things differently from how her own mother did them. She hasn’t encouraged her kids to take up acting, and indeed the older ones seem to be staying far away from the industry right now. In fact, Jolie said in the same W interview that her oldest child, Maddox, is actually training to become a pilot. When asked if she got nervous when he flew, Jolie answered with a laugh, “No. Maybe I just have a big family.” She went on, regarding her hopes and dreams for her kids, “I worry more that people aren’t finding themselves and something they love. I think that’s more dangerous, to walk so tentatively through life that you don’t take a risk. You don’t wake up with passion. I think that’s scarier. I’d rather they be out there trying and failing than not pushing and being passionate.”

It’s clear Jolie will support her children in whatever they want to do. And she feels the spirit of her mother with her as she continues her parenting journey. “I feel in contact with my mother when I look at my children,” she told French Marie Claire in 2014 (via People). “I can feel her influence over me then. I see that my way of raising them resembles the way she raised my brother and I… My mother is there, present in this influence, all the time.”

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