In the '90s and early aughts, Angelina Jolie was pumping out multiple films a year. She became a fixture in pop culture with the portrayals of characters like the unconquerable Lara Croft and villainous Maleficent. Then, Jolie's love life eclipsed her career. The multihyphenate's divorce from Brad Pitt has likely accrued more headlines than any of her films from the last decade. What became tabloid fodder was a brutal life change for Jolie and her family, which she explains is the reason she needed
to step back from Hollywood.
"We had to heal," she told WSJ of her family in December 2023. "There are things we needed to heal from." Jolie and Pitt, who share six children, filed for their contentious divorce in 2016, and it wasn't finalized until 2024. In those eight years, Jolie was seldom in the spotlight. "I needed to be home more with my kids," she told The Hollywood Reporter. Her films were few and far between within that hiatus, but Jolie wasn't stagnant. In 2023, she founded her sustainable fashion brand Atelier Jolie, which now stands as a brick-and-mortar shop in Manhattan's East Village.
Jolie isn't doing the day-to-day, in-person management, as she is still located in Los Angeles. But, she says, as soon as her youngest turns 18, she will flee the star-studded city. "I grew up in quite a shallow place," she told WSJ. "Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So you seek authenticity."
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Jolie's Empty-Nester Plans
Angelina Jolie isn't just planning to move to a different city, or even across the country; the "Maria" star's scope is international. "I'll spend a lot of time in Cambodia," she told THR. Jolie is a Cambodian citizen and once called the country her home "in my heart" during an interview at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It is also where she adopted her son, Maddox, in 2002. "I'll spend time visiting my family members wherever they may be in the world," she also revealed to the Reporter. Wherever she ends up will certainly be less vapid than the L.A. community that she describes.
In August 2025, it was reported that Jolie's plans to sell her house in Hollywood were already in the works. Her historic, $25 million estate — previously owned by American filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille — served as a home for her children amid her custody arrangement with Brad Pitt. Jolie's youngest kids, Vivienne and Knox Jolie-Pitt — who had quite a transformation over the years — turn 18 in 2026, a milestone that could mark their mother's final days in Hollywood. "She's eyeing several locations abroad," a source told People. "She'll be very happy when she's able to leave Los Angeles."
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