The next step was for the quartet, plus a nanny, to take a private jet to New York, where orphan expert Dr. Jane Aronson checked over Little Miss Jolie. While she was thankfully free of HIV, Zahara was in a fragile state, dehydrated, malnourished, and suffering from rickets. The following day she was admitted to the hospital with a potentially life-threatening case of salmonella poisoning, Angie keeping vigil by her bedside for a week as she slowly recovered. Zahara was not the only sick puppy. Brad, who had flown on to Los Angeles, was so ill that he checked himself into the hospital, suffering from viral meningitis.
On July 15, Zahara was given a clean bill of health and released from the hospital, spending another eight hours traveling to Malibu by private jet. Here she was reunited with her new “father,” and settled in to real life with her brother, Maddox, who had thus far seen her only in institutions, first an orphanage and then a hospital where she was on an IV drip. The family bonding experience did not last long. At the end of the month, Angie, who had earned her pilot’s license, flew Brad off in her own plane for a romantic weekend in Arizona. Zahara and Maddox, still feeling each other out, were left in the care of nannies. It was a significant weekend; under different circumstances he would have been celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary. Jennifer, meanwhile, spent that time with Brad’s mother, Jane, a signal perhaps that Jane was not entirely enamored of her son’s behavior.
After the couple returned to Malibu, Angie took Zahara back to New York for a further checkup with Dr. Aronson, who declared the child, now two pounds heavier than when she arrived in America, a “sugarplum”: “She has gone from the depression of abandonment [after the death of her birth mother],” the doctor said, “to being completely and unconditionally loved and attached.” Then the six-month-old returned to California to join her new brother for his fourth birthday, before taking off again in early August for Long Island, where Angie was shooting Robert De Niro’s movie The Good Shepherd, a tale of betrayal and double-dealing during the early years of the CIA.
While young Zahara was certainly getting a taste of Angie’s peripatetic lifestyle, her mother’s movie choice was interesting. She played a woman who traps herself in a loveless marriage after stealing her man, a troubled spy hunter played by Matt Damon, from a deaf woman whom she considers inferior. There were arguably parallels with her behavior toward Jennifer Aniston, in keeping with the theory, articulated by Dustin Hoffman, Billy Bob Thornton, and others, that actors unconsciously choose their roles to reflect their personal journey. The overt appeal of the part was the chance to work with Robert De Niro. It was also, intriguingly, the first time she had acted with Timothy Hutton since their affair and near marriage.
While her role was significant, she was not the star of the film, giving her time to pack up the kids and join Brad in the backwoods of Alberta, Canada, where he was about to spend four months shooting The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was, of course, Jesse, not the coward. After a long prep period, principal photography was halted at the end of August 2005, as it was on The Good Shepherd, to allow actors to man the phones in a charity telethon to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and left thousands in Louisiana and Mississippi stranded and homeless. While Angie wrote to President Bush and influential congressmen and senators, Brad’s involvement took a practical turn as he harnessed his contacts in the world of architecture to design sustainable housing in the worst-hit—and poorest—areas of New Orleans. His Make It Right initiative was eventually responsible for 150 environmentally friendly houses.
The delayed political and economic response to the hurricane was the talk of the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, a gathering of fine minds and original thinkers in New York in mid-September. Brad and Angie, still saying they were just friends, made a low-key appearance at the three-day forum, the couple somewhat self-conscious and deliberately keeping a distance from each other. As worldly as they were trying to become, neither Brad nor Angie was quite prepared for a crowd like this one. While there was a smattering of celebs, including Bono, Angie’s former paramour Mick Jagger, and Barbra Streisand, it was a well-informed, high-minded group, focused on policy, not People. One former White House veteran recalls seeing Brad “standing in a corner by himself, clearly out of his depth.” In general conversation, where he was often unsure of the politicians and countries under discussion, he made the sensible move and kept quiet. Angie, too, who was interested in the discussion on poverty, was scrambling to keep up with these eggheads, even though she had much more experience. Given the couple’s record for rolling up their sleeves and pitching in, the verdict may have been a shade patronizing and professorial.
This was the very point made by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the youngest-ever professor of economics at Harvard University, a UN advisor on poverty, and an all-around policy wonk. That same week in September, he and Angie promoted their joint TV documentary, The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, about their visit to a group of villages in Sauri, western Kenya. Sachs admired Angie’s readiness to get her hands dirty. “She waded right in,” he said, adding, “She is becoming an incredible leader.” Filmed in May 2005, the documentary demonstrated a successful experiment in social engineering, Sachs’s so-called Millennium Project attempting to make the region self-sufficient in food, education, and welfare. As with the inauguration of the Clinton Global Initiative, the release of the documentary was timed to coincide with the 2005 World Summit at the United Nations.
Angie willingly used the example of her daughter to publicize the show, her life lesson demonstrating how a little can lead to a lot. Zahara survived, she told Good Morning America, while many others did not, going on to say that Maddox was very protective toward her. “They’re the greatest little people I’ve ever met and they give me so much joy and I want to make a better world for them. I’m just grateful every day that I have the chance.” Certainly the Angie and Zahara show had the desired effect, generating a spike of interest in adopting from Africa, the four agencies specializing in Ethiopia flooded with requests for information following the interview.
While the world focused on Zee, as Angie called her second adopted child, in September she was nursing a very sensitive secret. She was pregnant with Brad’s child, the baby conceived before his divorce became final on October 2. Although that was reason enough to remain discreet, there were other factors, including family history—her mother miscarried her first child—as well as the convention that baby announcements are made only after the first trimester. Besides, she had a film to make and wanted no special favors.
When their filming commitments permitted, the happy couple spent most of their time together in Alberta, Brad hiring a big log cabin in the woods where they enjoyed the kind of privacy and respect from the locals that had been noticeable by their absence throughout their love affair. “Angie was pregnant. It was a very nice time for us,” recalled Brad. “We stayed out in the woods by a river. So personally, it was a magical time.” Although the paparazzi were kept well away from their backwoods idyll, they did attract unwelcome visitors. One day the couple and their kids were about to enter their cabin after a day’s sightseeing—Maddox had enjoyed the local dinosaur exhibit—when they heard banging, shuffling, and grunting from within. Fearing they were being burgled, Angie and the children retreated to their 4× 4 while Brad, king of the wild frontier, went to investigate. It was a couple of brown bears, attracted by open windows and the scent of food, playing havoc in the kitchen. Brad called the forest rangers, who, after shooing the bears away, lectured the couple on the need to keep the cabin secure.
These Beverly Hillbillies did, though, impress the locals in other ways, Angie described as “friendly and cordial,” as the couple shopped at the local mall, ate in the food court, played on the indoor rides, and did what came naturally—made out in public. One shopper, Rosemary Austen, reported: “Brad and Angelina had a passionate, straight-out-of-the-movies
moment when they shared a long kiss. Even though they had the kids in tow, it wasn’t just a peck on the cheek. It was just how you’d imagine that couple kissing.” They went on long motorbike rides together, stopping off at roadside diners and, when time allowed, spending the night in cheap motels—just as Angie did during the early days with Billy Bob.
There was one looming cloud on their horizon. While Angie and Brad had been told that Zahara was an orphan whose mother had died of AIDS, they learned that in fact the birth mother was alive. After their initial fears that she was going to claim her biological daughter, they discovered that the mother seemed to be pleased that her child had found a good home. Nonetheless, a court had to rule on the legitimacy of their adoption, and in late October Judge Dadnachew Tesfaye declared, much to Angie’s relief, that she had done nothing wrong and that Zahara was her legal child.
It was a relief not just for Brad and Angie, but also for Dr. Jane Aronson; Angie, accompanied by her brother, James, was scheduled to be guest of honor at Dr. Aronson’s first-ever fund-raiser, in aid of the Worldwide Orphans Foundation. At the New York gala, held in October, Angie announced her partnership with Aronson to build a pediatric AIDS center in Ethiopia. “I personally am not willing to wait any longer for action by the United States or any government while children are suffering and dying,” she told the audience.
Now three months pregnant but still keeping the fact a secret, she made a curious admission to People magazine: “Most of the night I just thought about how quickly I want to adopt again,” she said. “It’s a very special thing. There’s something about making a choice, waking up and traveling somewhere and finding your family.”
It was as if she felt guilty that the baby she was carrying would take the place of a more deserving case. Yet the baby was planned, her mother suggesting that Angie’s first biological child should be a Gemini. “She’s really into astrology and thought it would be great to have a Gemini like me,” Angie told friends. As ill as she was, Marche even suggested the child’s name, Shiloh, presumably forgetting to mention that the original idea was Jon Voight’s when they spotted a church bus in Georgia saying “Shiloh Baptist” during the making of Conrack.
As for Angie, she gave the impression that she wanted a biological baby only out of her love for Brad. Although she seemed dismissive, even neglectful, of her pregnancy, it was a huge leap of faith for Angie: a sign that she was willing to defy the Bertrand family curse of cancer and premature death by bringing a potentially genetically damaged child into the world. More than that, she was defying herself. For anorexics, pregnancy is dangerous, difficult, and emotionally challenging, with a high rate of postpartum depression. If anorexia is about control, then pregnancy confronts that mind-set head-on. Even if Angie’s anorexia was greatly improved, she nonetheless would have been reminded of her struggles with body image and feelings of revulsion. For many anorexics, adoption is the recommended path to becoming a mother.
Angie seemed to respond to her pregnancy as she had to other traumas in her life, by disassociating and carrying on as if it weren’t happening. Over Thanksgiving, she and Brad flew to Geneva and then to Kashmir in Pakistan to see for themselves the impact of the October earthquake, which had left at least seventy-three thousand dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. Chartering a helicopter to complete the arduous journey, the couple met with people facing a bleak winter in the mountains without adequate shelter.
They returned to their respective film sets, the wardrobe department on The Good Shepherd having to let out Angie’s clothing in order to disguise her pregnancy. In early December, as shooting of Jesse James was about to wrap, Brad announced, to much congratulation, that he was about to become a dad—to Maddox and Zahara. While Angie’s pregnancy was literally under wraps, the couple felt secure enough in the health of their unborn child for Brad to forge ahead and make the family whole by adopting. From the sidelines, Angie’s father gave their informal union his own blessing. “I like the look of Brad and I always have done. He’s a good fellow and he’s very gifted.”
Brad, though, was concerned about the mother of his child. She refused to slow down, bouncing around the country, eating badly, and sleeping poorly. In January she paid the price for her frenetic lifestyle, fainting on the set of The Good Shepherd, which was then shooting in the Dominican Republic. “I hadn’t eaten for three hours. We were doing a Christmas scene sitting around this piano singing songs when the world just went completely black in front of me and I nearly threw up,” she told writer Jonathan Van Meter. “They had to move me to the side, get me a nurse.” She quietly told her director, Robert De Niro, that she “might” be pregnant, and he went off and got her a banana. One source was reported as saying: “She looks really frail and she’s pale and gaunt. Brad has been trying to persuade her to go on bed rest, but she won’t hear any of it.”
Instead she maintained her hectic pace, flying with Brad from the Dominican Republic to Haiti to visit their friend musician Wyclef Jean and view the self-help projects encouraged by his charity, Yéle Haiti. Although the State Department had issued travel advisories against visiting this unstable nation, Angie was impressed by the pride and resilience of the locals. “You hear so much just about the danger and the fear and then you come here and you meet just an amazing people. Given just a little chance, and given a little help, this is going to be a great country.”
The media focus, however, was not on the country but on Angie’s countenance, the couple announcing her pregnancy on January 12, 2006. The first pictures of “le bump” were sold to People magazine, the funds going directly to Yéle Haiti. More than that, Brad was going to be a dad—officially. On January 19, 2006, he had formally jumped through all the hoops required to adopt Maddox and Zahara. They were now little Jolie-Pitts.
At the end of January, the couple flew to Davos, Switzerland, where Angie was again due to speak at the World Economic Forum. The days of skulking and pretending were over, Brad by her side as Angie met with UN secretary general Kofi Annan and other movers and shakers. They spent the next few weeks in Paris, where they discussed A Mighty Heart, the latest project for Plan B Entertainment, with Mariane Pearl, and Berlin, where Brad was working with an architecture firm on a “green” hotel in Dubai.
The attention in Paris was relentless, the family followed everywhere, from the amusement park by the Eiffel Tower to the famous Cirque d’hiver, and even to the playground where Brad took Maddox to test their new remote-controlled model cars. They did manage to escape for a few days, when the two novice pilots—accompanied by their Los Angeles–based instructor—flew the family to the south of France to check out secluded villas to lease.
They were adamant that they did not want the birth of their first child to turn into a circus or a repeat of the Kenyan beach vacation picture saga, where they shaped but did not manage the situation. This time they wanted complete control and would go anywhere in the world to find it. The couple decided that Namibia, the African country where Angie had filmed Beyond Borders and where she had first become a mother, would be ideal. It was a conscious choice, Angie argued. “We aren’t completely insane. We looked for places that were not rife with malaria and dengue fever, and Namibia is good for that because it’s so dry.”
Angie had come a long way from her first visit to Africa, when she arrived with no cell phone, watch, or even makeup, her belongings thrown into a cheap duffel bag. This time they had the joint firepower to stage their own private African coup, the family arriving at Walvis Bay Airport by private jet. Before they set foot on Namibian soil on April 3, 2006, their bodyguard Mickey Brett had established a “no see” zone around the beachfront Burning Shore Beach Lodge, in the hamlet of Langstrand, which they had completely taken over for the duration. Green mesh netting was erected around the hotel to stop long-range photography. The popular oyster bar at the end of the pier nearby was closed down, to prevent any prying eyes from possibly seeing the couple.
Then the Namibian government
agreed to enforce a “no fly” zone over the stretch of coast on which the couple’s hotel lay. Journalists and photographers were not allowed into the country without the express permission of the celebrity couple. This edict, signed by Permanent Secretary Loini-Nyanyukweni Katoma, said that the Namibian government intended to support the Hollywood celebrities in their quest for peace and quiet. There was also the little matter of the marketing opportunity their arrival brought, as well as promised donations to the local hospital.
The few enterprising souls who made their cautious way to the remote resort found themselves confronted by Brett and a small army of bodyguards, several of them former South African soldiers during apartheid. There was no goodwill from Angie’s ambassador, Brett telling local photographers: “If I find anyone getting a picture of Jolie, I will fucking smash someone to pieces. I’m not joking. I’ll fucking put someone in the hospital.” During the eight-week-long game of cat and mouse, Brett’s crew cordoned off roads, made nighttime searches of houses, and stopped suspect vehicles. At least one photographer was laced with pepper spray, others beaten up, and Brett himself was charged with assaulting a local restaurant owner. As a final throw of the dice, freelance photographer Steve Butler offered Brett £250,000 for the first picture of the baby. It was so much wishful thinking, Brett taping the conversation with the British paparazzo.
While photographers chasing big celebrity game generated little sympathy, Namibia’s checkered history—it only became independent in 1990 after being a protectorate of South Africa during apartheid—made outraged locals particularly sensitive to their government’s cession of authority to rich outsiders. “Never in my life have I seen two individuals exercise so much power here,” commented Phil ya Nangoloh, executive director of Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights. “They effectively captured the state.” Local farmer Tomas Lorry was equally unimpressed, telling the New Statesman: “The restricting of local and international press and this pseudo-royal attitude are the exact opposite of what Namibia needs. People who for years tried to build a democratic society can only shake their heads at this.”
Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography Page 33