Angelina Jolie Admits She Never Wanted Motherhood, Reveals Cambodia Experience Changed Her Perspective

Over the years, fans saw Angelina Jolie portraying different characters and juggling several life roles such as an actress, director, humanitarian, as well as a loving wife to Brad Pitt and devoted mother to six children. However, Jolie has revealed that she never thought motherhood was something that would have fit her.

The “Maleficent” actress was candid during a recent interview with Associated Press where she shared her views about being a mother, including an event that changed her perspective about life, Us Weekly magazine reported. The actress stated that her first trip to Cambodia while filming the movie “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” made her realize that there was so much “about life that [she] needed to understand” and that she felt “very humbled by it.”

Jolie explained that it triggered her search for knowledge and also led her to the realization that she wanted to become a mother. The actress recounted that she found it “strange” since she “never wanted to have a baby” or to become pregnant and be a mom. However, it was when she was playing with the children in Cambodia that things further shifted for her. “It was suddenly very clear to me that my son was in the country, somewhere,” she stated.

She then adopted son Maddox in 2002, who is now 14 years old. In 2003, she also opened a foundation in honor of her eldest son in Cambodia’s Battambang province, according to E! News. The said foundation helps to finance conservation, education and health care projects in rural areas of said Asian country.

Maddox has also entered the movie industry and has been assisting his mother behind-the-scenes of Jolie’s latest directorial project “First They Killed my Father.” The upcoming Netflix original production is based on Loung Ung’s memoir that tells the events of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime during the 1970s, but told from a child’s perspective.

Meanwhile, Maddox was the first of three children that Jolie adopted over the years. She adopted daughter Zahara from Ethiopia in 2005. She and now husband Pitt also adopted son Pax from Vietnam in 2007. The Hollywood couple also have three children together, namely daughter Shiloh and twins Vivienne and Knox.