**Previously labelled a ‘master manipulator’ of the press, Angelina Jolie has been on the receiving end of a backlash. Almost a year on from her split from Brad Pitt, E! chief news correspondent Melanie Bromley reports from Los Angeles on her toughest month yet. **
Growing up in Hollywood has made Angelina Jolie an expert at understanding how to control her image. It’s a skill that has worked for her many times in the past. From the breakdown of her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton, when she set up photographs of her and then newly adopted son Maddox playing in a park, to the first pictures of her and Brad Pitt at the start of their romance, together on a beach
in Kenya, it’s fair to say she has always understood the power of her image.
Indeed, when a family argument on a private jet marked the death of Brangelina, many predicted that it would spell a renaissance for Angelina, with one headline trumpeting ‘Brangelina Is Dead; Long Live Angelina’. But almost a year on, she has faced a backlash that few could have predicted.
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The split might have been a surprise to many, but the aftermath has been equally, if not more, seismic. Newly single with six kids to co-parent, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have both been forced to undergo epic transformations – Brad is now sober and spending his free time learning to be a sculptor, while Angelina is reeling from a rash of negative press, something she is not used to after 10 years of being one half of the most famous couple in the world.
For a while, after that dramatic showdown on the LA-bound jet, it seemed like it would be Brad who
would be the most tarnished. Fingers were pointed that he was to blame for the marital breakdown with rumours he was drinking too much, getting close to his Allied co-star, Marion Cotillard, or being too strict a father. Questions that ultimately led to the FBI and DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) getting involved and Brad being temporarily denied access to his kids.
But within a few months, Marion revealed she was pregnant with her second child (by her long-term partner) and Brad was cleared by the authorities. In January, a much thinner looking Brad made his first public appearance attending the Golden Globes. It was clear from the warmth of the A-list crowd’s applause that, no matter what charges had been lobbed at him, in their eyes he had come out of his 10-year relationship unscathed. But the same cannot be said for Angelina.
In May, we were properly introduced to this new rebranded version of Brad when he gave his rst post-split interview to GQ. Newly sober, he candidly admitted he had just started therapy. One photo showed him with tears in his eyes, cementing him as a man willing to show his true self to the world, warts and all.
But Angelina does not seem to be ready to do the same. When her turn came to break her silence, in a Vanity Fair cover story a few weeks ago, she allowed the magazine into her new $25 million LA home (where the famous nomad is reluctantly having to put down roots).
As she swanned around the mostly unfurnished house, she tried to prove she is like any other single mum struggling to come to terms with a new reality: ‘She finally settles on the living room, which a set-decorator friend furnished on the fly, with two creamy-white sofas and some big throw pillows... She looks at them curiously. “I didn’t even know I needed ‘throw pillows’.”’ But her aim missed the mark and instead was seen by some as being out of touch.
As the New York Post wrote, ‘Is anyone really buying this? Jolie spent so many years in the Brangelina bubble that she’s totally out of step with the culture. We’ve all seen behind the curtain. We’re familiar with enough celebrity apparatus to recognise staged paparazzi photos and fake scandals. Yet Jolie seems to believe we’re still in the Old Hollywood era. She’s become Norma Desmond, a movie star who still thinks she’s backed by a studio system, packaging a tidy narrative in a glossy magazine that she’s convinced the public will believe.’
Rather than open up about the split, she took the high road and instead used the interview to promote her Cambodian movie, First They Killed My Father. Usually an admirable tack (and understandable considering her children), in this case falling back on her immense humanitarian work to divert from too much focus on her personal life back red. While the motive behind the movie depicting the true horror of the Khmer Rouge years is commendable, in order to cast their lead character, Angelina and the producers visited orphanages and schools in slum areas, where they gave kids money and then proceeded to snatch it away from them to see how they would react. Not surprisingly, once the interview was published, the audition process drew widespread criticism.
After days of negative press and public outcry, Angelina accused the magazine of misrepresenting her quotes. (Vanity Fair then hit back with a detailed description of the interview process, explaining how it had been recorded on two different devices, thus proving their quotes were accurate.)
Being able to control the press is ultimately what got Angelina out of the hole she fell into more than a decade ago, when she first met Brad. Rightly or wrongly, their closeness during the filming of Mr And Mrs Smith will always be seen as the reason for the end of his picture-perfect marriage to Jennifer Aniston. Yet from that mess, Angelina emerged as a do-gooder, someone who was above being labelled as simply ‘the other woman’.
But as the recent furore over VF proves, in this new democracy – where social media has given anyone and everyone a voice, infamy and fame may have been magnified, but star power has most certainly been diminished.
For Angelina, someone who has famously always rejected the idea of having a publicist, it’s taken away her ability to manipulate her image. And considering her recent spate of bad press, control might be exactly what Angelina needs to get back on top.
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