What Angelina Jolie Has Said About Working With Her Kids on Projects

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Angelina Jolie loves seeing her children find their passions — and sometimes that's on set (or in the theater) with her.

Jolie shares sons Maddox (born August 2001) and Pax (born November 2003), daughters Zahara (born January 2005) and Shiloh (born May 2006), and twins Knox and Vivienne (born July 2008) with ex-husband Brad Pitt. As her kids have grown up, Oscar-winner Jolie has included them in several of her projects.

Maddox made his first cameo in Pitt's 2013 film World War Z. In 2014, Pax, Zahara and Vivienne had minor roles in Maleficent which starred Jolie as the titular character.

After dabbling in acting, Jolie's children shifted their focus from on-screen to behind-the-scenes. Maddox joined his parents behind the scenes for their 2015 movie By the Sea as a trainee. Two years later, Jolie brought Maddox and Pax on as part of the team for the TV series First They Killed My Father, which she directed. Maddox worked as an executive producer while Pax was credited as a still photographer.

Angelina Jolie's Most Inspiring Motherhood Quotes

While Jolie's children have acted in the past, she confessed that their preference is to work behind the scenes rather than on camera.

"No, I think they're especially shy, very private people," Jolie said of her children's preference to being crew members over actors to E! News in October 2024. "And they want to be private."

Maddox and Pax have continued to work alongside their mom in several of her other projects including Without Blood and Maria. Vivienne, for her part, teamed up with Jolie for the Broadway musical adaptation of The Outsiders. While Jolie was a producer, Vivienne served as a producer's assistant.

Keep scrolling to see what Jolie has said about working with her children:

Trying New Things

Jolie shared that both Maddox and Pax were doing assistant directing with her for Maria, which they've done in the past.

"They've done that quite a few times, and I think that's good for them," she told The Hollywood Reporter in August 2024. "Pax tends to do stills and he gets brought in, and [director] Pablo [Larraín] was wonderful and recognized that he was good at it."

Watching Her Work

"They've seen me go through a lot of things, but they hadn't experienced me expressing a lot of the pain that usually a parent hides from a child," Jolie said in a December 2024 interview with BBC News about how Maddox and Pax aided her during her emotional scenes as real-live opera diva Maria Callas in Maria. "So, they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug or they would bring me cups of tea."

Jolie added that it was good for her sons to see their mom "not do something easily" and get frustrated but have the courage to "try again."

"One of the greatest privileges of being an actor is you often are supported by a crew to try something and explore something you've never done," she continued. "And this certainly was most challenging."

Seeing Them Get Inspired

Jolie opened up about how blown away she was to see how passionate Vivienne was about The Outsiders musical when they first saw the show together.

"As a mother, as a person, I was watching it, but I was really watching the effect it was having on my young daughter and what she was telling me about herself, and I was learning what about it was important to her and why it connected so deeply to her," Jolie said during a June 2024 interview with Deadline. "It was a very different experience of understanding, of how this is having a significant effect on her as a young person right now, and she's communicating something to me."

After that, Jolie watched Vivienne as she worked on how they could bring the Broadway adaptation to life.

"Viv and I sat together and we wrote down what we liked, what we were curious about. And they responded to our notes," she recalled. "For me, it was a moment to learn more about Viv, not me thinking of becoming a producer."

Taking Notes

Jolie revealed that Vivienne was not afraid to give her mom critiques as she took her role seriously.

"She'll correct me. She'll say, 'Didn't you read the memo? We have to do this. We have to go through this,'" Jolie said to People in April 2024 of working with her youngest daughter. "She's been a really tough assistant. She takes it very, very seriously."