Angelina Jolie Speaks on Daughter’s Impact
Angelina Jolie is proud of her eldest daughter, Zahara. The 45-year-old actress and activist interviewed Ugandan climate change activist Vanessa Nakate for the Time 100 issue, and couldn’t help but gush about her daughter.
While discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, Jolie said, “My daughter is from Ethiopia, one of my children. And I have learned so much from her. She is my family, but she is an extraordinary African woman.”
“Her connection to her country, her continent, is very — it’s her own and it’s something I only stand back in awe of,” added the Oscar winner.
She heaped on the praise in relation to the educational system in America and how Black history is taught in schools.
“But what I see in, for example, American history books and how limited they are… they start teaching people who are Black about their lives through the Civil Rights movement, which is such a horrible place to begin,” Jolie explained.
Jolie shares all six of her children — Maddox, 18, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 11 — with ex-husband Brad Pitt. The pair were a couple for many years before tying the knot in 2014. They split in 2016.
On parenting
In June, Angelina Jolie opened up about parenting her kids during an interview with Vogue India.
Asked what’s important to consider when raising adopted and biological siblings, she told the magazine, “‘Adoption’ and ‘orphanage’ are positive words in our home. With my adopted children, I can’t speak of pregnancy, but I speak with much detail and love about the journey to find them and what it was like to look in their eyes for the first time.”
All adopted kids, said Jolie, “come with a beautiful mystery of a world that is meeting yours.”
“When they are from another race and foreign land, that mystery, that gift, is so full. For them, they must never lose touch with where they came from,” she added. “They have roots that you do not. Honor them. Learn from them. It’s the most amazing journey to share. They are not entering your world, you are entering each other’s worlds.”
