Angelina Jolie has made a heartbreaking admission about her two eldest sons.
The 49-year-old actress is a proud mum to six children who she shares with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt, 60; Maddox, 23, Pax, 20, Zahara, 29, Shiloh, 18, and 16-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.
Jolie boasts a decade-spanning acting career full to the brim with countless accolades and it's clear fans can't wait to see her latest film, Maria, which is set to hit cinemas early doors next year. Check out the official trailer here:
The upcoming film is a musical drama about the famed opera singer, Maria Callas, who retreats to Paris in the 1970s after a glamorous, yet tumultuous, life in the public eye.
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Jolie actually worked on the set of Maria alongside Maddox and Pax and, in a new interview with the BBC, she revealed they finally got to witness 'the pain' she usually hides from them.
She explained: "The character [Callas] has a lot of pain and they've of course 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.
"So they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug or they would bring me cups of tea."
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The Mr & Mrs Smith star added the experience was 'a new way' of navigating how to be honest with Maddox and Pax, who took on roles as production assistants on the film, about her feelings 'in an even greater way'.
Jolie also opened up about what it was like singing opera for the role, something she says was 'very physically demanding' as training took a hefty seven months.
"We started with regular singing classes and it was challenging in many ways, but when the opera classes began, what it requires with your breathwork and your body and just the force of what you push through yourself, it's just a very different physicality," she explained, adding she was 'actually quite shy about singing'.
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During filming, Jolie said Pax recorded a lot of her singing practice 'so he was with me in my early horrible days'.
"It's always good for your children to watch your mum not do something easily, but swear and fight and fail and have to try again," she said.
"So that's an important and beautiful thing."
"It was probably one of the areas in my life that I was hesitant," Jolie also confessed, but it's clear the initial hesitation was completely outweighed by the exciting challenge she was 'privileged' enough to take on.
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She continued: "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 and this certainly was most challenging."
Topics: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Celebrity, Parenting, TV And Film
Rhiannon Ingle