by Ian Halperin
BRANGELINA
THE UNTOLD STORY OF
BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE
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Ian Halperin
BRANGELINA
THE UNTOLD STORY OF
BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE
Published by Transit Publishing Inc.
© 2009 Transit Publishing Inc. and Ian Halperin
The reproduction or transmission of any part of this publication in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, or storage in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher, is an infringement of copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic production of the material, a licence must be obtained from the Canadian
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ISBN: 978-1-926745-43-5
Editor: Timothy Niedermann
Copyeditor: Shannon Partridge
Proofreaders: Nachammai Raman,
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Cover design: François Turgeon
Text design and composition: Nassim Bahloul
Photos insert design: Pierre Pommey
Cover and back cover pictures:
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DEDICATION
To my family, for always being there.
To my daughter Clover-Sky,
for bringing me each day all the joy and
happiness in the world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible but for the help and encouragement of many others. My heartfelt gratitude to:
Pierre Turgeon, the amazing head of Transit Publishing, for his continuous support and for structuring the shape of the book. Thank you for being there every step of the way.
Jarred Weisfeld, certainly the best agent in the world and also the most devoted friend. My daughter advised me to keep Jarred on for life—done deal! You are there at every moment.
Francois Turgeon, the whimsical genius whose creativity and insight has inspired me to keep going.
Timothy Niedermann, my undying gratitude for being a first-class editor. Here’s to you!
Max Wallace, for your insight, vision, and relentless hours of fact checking. Here’s to continued friendship, health, and success.
Sean O’Brien, my business partner at ianundercover.com. You have always been a rock. Here’s to much continued success for your design business.
The brave people who spoke on the record and those who spoke off the record because they are still affiliated with Brangelina.
The entire staff at Transit Publishing for your incredible support and friendship.
Thanks to (in completely random order):
Ruth Fishman, Alan Kaufman, Anthony Ziccardi, Ian Kleinert, Howard Stern, Judith Regan, Shloime Perel, Ron Deckelbaum, Alison Moyet, Randolph Freedman, Dylan Ratigan, Geraldo Rivera, Charles Small, Paris Match, the City of Oslo, Skavlan, Samantha Lockwood, Denise DuBarry, Michele Frenière, Robert Brouillette, Fran Weinstein, D. J. Petroro, Mancow Muller, Isabelle Dubé, Stuart Nulman, Larry and Belinda Seidlin, Dax, Renee Bosh, Andrew Rollings, Dr. Tony Stanton, Michael Cohen, Jeffrey Feldman, Jesse Jackson, Elliot MacDonald, Jon Reisler, Fleeze Fleming, Mitch Melnick, Christopher Heard, George Thwaites, Paula Froelich, Page Six, Noah Levy (In Touch), Lloyd Fishler, Karin Thomsen (1969-2009), Vanesa Curutchet, Peter Daley, Nate Colbert, Miles Wilkerson, Jimmy Davidson, JetBlue, Sofitel L.A., The L.A. Public Library, Norah Lawlor, Samantha Harris, Kia Zalewski, Annette Witheridge, Kevin Stinson, Jack Stinson, Amy Stinson, Meredith and Matt, Liz Jote, the gang in Austin (Christine, Angie, and Nuno), Morgan Nicholls, Jillian Harris, Esmond Choueke, Jim Nelson, Paul Santana, OTR, Dany Bouchard, Varda, Noir Chocolat, David Gavrilchuk, Elisa Gross, Irwin Gross, Bill Reed, Julius Grey, Nathalie McLennan, Al Barry, Pumpkin Jones, Kate and Keane, Kris Kostov, Michael Peshev, Denny Jacobsen, Nancy Grace, Terrance Hutton, Laura and Amanda, Petro Karloski, Sean Gottlieb, Rudy Bing, Alain Sommet, Brigit Laferrière, Daschl Wallace, Steven Sherman, Aldon James, The National Arts Club, Dawn Olsen, Mike Hess, Tommy Mays, Jacob Cohen, Al Reed, Stanley Hart, Laurent Medelgi, Gerry Gorman, Jennifer Robinson, Bob Shuman, Bryan White, Cynthia Jackson, Robert Lee, Ella Donaldson, Justin St. Marie, Peggy Allison, Clarissa Young, Bonnie Fuller, Michael Thomas, Terrance Dean, Ceasar DiSantos, Allison Lewis, Mr. Keating, Jerome Sabu, Yitzhak Klein, Bob White, Ted Ridder, Paul Carvalho, J. P. Pawliw Fry, Joe Franklin, Carl Horowitz, Leonard Wexler, Harvey Levin, Britt Taylor, Wendy Peterson, Jean Anne Rose, Lynn Grady, Matthew Benjamin, and Etienne Champagne. If I’ve forgotten anyone, mucho thanks!!!!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
DADDY’S GIRL
BACK TO 90210
DRAWING BLOOD
BRAD PITT
IN A DARK PLACE
JONNY AND JENNY
JUST LIKE GIA?
JONNY LEAVES, JENNY STAYS
DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN
STARDOM
BROTHERLY LOVE
BETWEEN BROTHER AND SISTER
BILLY BOB
SEX, BLOOD, AND LARA CROFT
BRAD AND JENNIFER
THE FEUD
BRAD AND ANGELINA
A NEW IMAGE
BRANGELINA
CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
Maybe it’s because I’d seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest too many times, but when I set out to infiltrate the psychiatric hospital where Angelina Jolie was once committed, I couldn’t help but be nervous.
In my career as an author and documentary filmmaker, I have specialized in undercover investigations. I have posed as a male model to expose the fashion industry, a gay actor to get the goods on Hollywood and Scientology, a hairdresser to meet Michael Jackson, a paparazzo to expose the behind-the-scenes reality of the movie industry, and I have assumed countless other guises. But those experiences merely required chutzpah; there was no real risk involved.
This time, I had recurring nightmares of being found out and ending up like Jack Nicholson’s character, Randle P. McMurphy—a lobotomized vegetable. Still, it seemed the only way I could hope to gain any insight into the central question that kept popping up as I tried to make sense of Angelina Jolie’s remarkable life and career: is she really crazy, as she once would have had us believe, or is it all an act?
Having followed her and Brad Pitt for a number of years, spoken to countless friends and colleagues, and watched her astonishing transformation almost before my eyes, I still couldn’t make up my mind. One person who had known her for more than fifteen years insisted to me that she was still “crazy as a loon.” Her father pu
blicly echoed that assessment, referring to her “mental problems” on national television. Yet many others who knew her insisted that she had put all that behind her and that her metamorphosis into a philanthropic humanitarian who just happened to be a Hollywood idol—a virtual Saint Angelina—was both sincere and inspirational.
I knew all too well that in Hollywood nothing is as it appears. For almost a century, the town has perfected the art of illusion, both on and off the screen. Our perceptions about celebrities are often tightly controlled by a publicity machine that makes us believe only what it wants us to. Piercing that illusion to discover the truth about any star is difficult, even for a probing journalist. In the case of Jolie, it was proving next to impossible. In order to get a handle on what makes her tick, I decided to visit the place where she reached rock bottom a mere eight years earlier, when she self-destructed for reasons still unknown.
Posing as a suicidal psychiatric patient, I quietly slipped onto the ward where Jolie had spent the last seventy-two hours of what one friend aptly called the “cocoon” of her previous life before she emerged to become the glamorous movie star the world knows today, half of the iconic Hollywood supercouple known as “Brangelina.”
In order to make sense of those three days, however, and the incredible career trajectory that followed—not to mention her storied relationship to Brad Pitt—it is essential to first understand the life and events that led Angelina Jolie to the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA in the spring of 2000.
DADDY’S GIRL
As any psychoanalyst or biographer worth their salt will tell you, the logical place to start in order to gain an understanding of the subject is at the beginning. But as both practitioners know all too well, this is easier said than done. The subject is often adept at laying strategically placed roadblocks to ensure that the truth remains inaccessible.
Just as the world knows two distinct versions of Angelina Jolie—the wild, disturbed bad girl and the doting mother and humanitarian—there are two different, deeply contradictory versions of her early life and childhood. Neither is completely true nor completely false, and each is equally important for distinguishing fact from myth. In both versions, however, Jolie’s father is central. And so, to understand her, it is essential to understand him.
When Jon Voight stunned moviegoers with his iconic role as the gay hustler Joe Buck in the 1969 classic Midnight Cowboy, the media proclaimed him an overnight movie star. In fact, he had already been slogging it out in bit parts for almost a decade by the time he slipped on the cowboy hat and played sidekick to Dustin Hoffman’s tubercular con artist, Ratso Rizzo.
Voight grew up in Yonkers, New York, the grandson of a Catholic Slovakian immigrant, George Voytka. To help support his family, Voight’s father, Elmer, went to work as a caddy at an all-Jewish golf club when he was only eight years old. The members of the club took the young Elmer under their wing, however, and taught him not just about golf, but also how to speak proper English, how to use a knife and fork, and other important skills that would help him assimilate into American society. By the time he was eighteen, Elmer’s golf skills were good enough for him to turn professional, and thereafter he earned a good living as a country-club golf pro, becoming something of a local celebrity. To cap his successful Americanization, he changed his name to Voight.
Years later, Jon Voight recalled his father: “He was just a delightful man, a wonderful man, full of fun. And he had very strong principles. He didn’t tolerate dishonesty, didn’t like liars, and didn’t suffer fools gladly … People loved him.”
Each of Elmer’s sons went on to considerable success in his chosen field. James became a songwriter and wrote a number of hits under his pseudonym, Chip Taylor, including the classic rock song, “Wild Thing.” Jon’s older brother Barry became one of the world’s leading volcanologists.
Jon Voight attended Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he first caught the acting bug and appeared in a number of student productions. In 1959, a year before he graduated, he landed his first professional acting assignment in the off-Broadway production, O Oysters Revue. After one critic panned him, declaring that he could “neither talk nor walk,” Voight seriously considered giving up acting. But he persevered and landed the role of the singing Nazi, Rolf, in The Sound of Music on Broadway in 1961, replacing the original cast member. It was in this production that he met Lauri Peters, an accomplished young actress who played Liesl and who, along with her stage siblings, received a Tony nomination for best supporting actor. Each night onstage, Voight and Peters performed the memorable love song “I am Sixteen” together, in which Rolf promises to take care of Liesl. Although Rolf’s devotion to the Nazi party gets in the way of his budding romance with Liesl in the story onstage, offstage a real-life romance began to develop between the two, and in 1962 they were married.
Through the mid-1960s, Voight’s acting career developed slowly. He played a number of small roles on TV shows such as Gunsmoke and Coronet Blue, along with bit parts in Hollywood westerns and B-movies. In 1966, he started to get more notice for his acting abilities when he spent a season with the California National Shakespeare Festival, and in 1967 he won a Theater World award for his role in the stage production of That Summer, That Fall, acting opposite a young Tyne Daly. Success had its price, though; his marriage to Peters ended that same year, apparently due to their conflicting acting schedules, which seldom allowed them to be in the same part of the country for any length of time.
In 1969, Voight’s groundbreaking role in Midnight Cowboy vaulted him into the Hollywood elite. Shortly thereafter he met a stunningly beautiful young actress, the late Marcheline Bertrand, at a party in the Hollywood Hills. In 1971, they were married.
Bertrand was born in a suburb of Chicago, the daughter of a working-class French Canadian, Rolland Bertrand, and his wife, Lois June Gouwens.
Although Bertrand is often described as a French actress, Jolie tried to set the record straight in a 2001 interview with Allure magazine: “My mom is as far from French Parisian as you can get. She’s part Iroquois Indian, from Chicago. She grew up in a bowling alley that my grandparents owned.” It is unknown whether Bertrand actually had any Iroquois blood; the story seems to come from something Voight told Angelina when she was little about her French Canadian ancestry to make it seem more exotic. (It is well-known that there was a lot of intermarriage between the early French settlers in Canada and the native peoples.)
When Bertrand was fifteen, her family moved to Los Angeles. There, Bertrand got the acting bug and promptly enrolled at the Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. It is often said that Bertrand gave up a promising acting career when, at the age of twenty-one, she married Voight, but this is an exaggeration. Before she met her future husband, she had no professional experience to speak of, not that she hadn’t made an impression on people. “She was an unusually good person in the best sense of the word,” remembers Strasberg’s widow, Anna, with whom Bertrand trained. “It’s rare in your life when you meet somebody like her.” In 1971, Voight used his connections to land his fiancée a small role on the TV show Ironside, but this and a number of subsequent minor movie roles made no impression, and her career stagnated.
In May 1973, less than two years after their marriage, Bertrand gave birth to a son, James Haven Voight. A baby daughter arrived two years later, in June 1975. They christened her Angelina Jolie Voight. Later it was explained that the children’s middle names were specifically chosen to give them potential stage names in the event they decided to take up acting. Interviewing his daughter for the June 1997 issue of Interview magazine, Voight described for her his recollection of her birth:
You don’t remember it, but when you emerged from your mother’s womb, I picked you up, held you in my hand, and looked at your face. You had your finger by the side of your cheek, and you looked very, very wise, like my old best friend. I started to tell you how your mom and I were so happy to have you here, and that we were going to take grea
t care of you and watch for all those signs of who you were and how we could help you achieve all that wonderful potential God gave you. I made that pledge and everybody in the room started crying.
Sadly, less than a year after Angelina was born, Voight and Bertrand separated, amid reports of Voight’s womanizing. A mutual friend, Larry Groen, provided some insight into the couple’s relationship:
Jon was absolutely smitten with Mar. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and heads would always turn when she entered the room, even in a town where beautiful women were everywhere. I wouldn’t call their relationship tumultuous; they didn’t fight. But she was at home raising two small children and Jon was this movie star who everybody wanted a piece of. And I mean everybody. These were the days when swinging started to be in vogue, and there were orgies literally every night, especially in Malibu, where people threw wild parties at their beach houses. The temptations were everywhere and most people succumbed, not just Jon. Keep in mind that after Midnight Cowboy, he was very, very hot. Women threw themselves at the guy wherever he went. And not just women, men too. He had played this famous gay character, and people assumed that he was homosexual. Most actors were, or they went both ways. But not Jon, at least not that I could tell … He liked women a lot. I think somebody told Mar about a party where they saw Jon all over a woman, and that’s what alerted her. As far as I remember, it wasn’t one affair that broke up their marriage. Of course, everybody was cheating; everybody in Hollywood was getting married and divorcing. Very few marriages survived those crazy times. There was a lot of sex; a lot more than today, that’s for sure.
Other accounts say that Voight was having an affair with another actress. He himself will not elaborate, explaining simply, “I was having difficulty with the marriage. I had an affair, and there was a divorce.” Voight moved out and paid enough alimony and child support for Bertrand to live comfortably but not extravagantly. According to numerous allegations, Voight virtually abandoned his young family, causing his son and daughter to harbor years of resentment. “My father and I were never close,” Angelina told People magazine in August 2003. Voight “seldom saw his daughter while she was growing up,” wrote Vanity Fair in November 2004 after interviewing Jolie. “My mom raised me,” Angelina now tells interviewers. Likewise, James has frequently spoken in recent years of his bitterness towards his father for leaving them in the lurch. But the facts appear to speak otherwise. Bertrand and Voight shared custody in a very amicable agreement and split their time with the children fairly.