Angelina Jolie revealed that she would not pursue a career in Hollywood if she would be joining the industry in 2023.
The 48-year-old actress told The Wall Street Journal that she would consider acting in theater but would steer clear of Tinseltown due to the public scrutiny that comes with being a Hollywood star.
“I wouldn’t be an actress today,” Jolie said. “When I was starting out, it wasn’t as much of an expectation to be as public, to share so much.”
Jolie’s father, Jon Voight, and her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, were both actors, and she decided to follow in their footsteps at an early age. The Academy Award winner has lived most of her life in the spotlight after rising to fame in the 1990s.
“Because I grew up around Hollywood, I was never very impressed with it,” Jolie said. “I never bought into it as significant or important.”
The media attention that followed Jolie for decades intensified amid her highly-publicized divorce from Brad Pitt. Jolie and Pitt met on the set of their 2004 movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” and they went public with their romance after the actor and his then-wife Jennifer Aniston announced their separation.
The couple became tabloid fixtures with their relationship, earning the moniker “Brangelina.” Pitt and Jolie tied the knot in 2014, but they went on to split two years later.
Jolie told the WSJ that she has experienced health problems due to the stress of public scrutiny. She recalled filming the 2018 movie “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” and noticing that her voice had changed registers since she first played the role in 2014’s “Maleficent.”
“My body reacts very strongly to stress,” Jolie said. “My blood sugar goes up and down. I suddenly had Bell’s palsy six months before my divorce.”