Angelina Jolie, 46, drew inspiration from her own life to nail her latest film role. The Oscar-winning actress stars in Marvel’s Eternals as Thena, a fierce warrior Eternal who can form any weapon out of cosmic energy, and she spoke to Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Wednesday (Aug. 18) about how she personally related to her character being among a group of an alien race who come together after ages apart. “I just wanted to be a part of this family,” she told the publication. “I have a slightly unconventional family myself, so it felt familiar.”
Angelina shares six children, three of whom are adopted, with her ex Brad Pitt, 57, whom she’s currently embroiled in a gnarly custody battle with — hence the “unconventional family” reference. As Angelina explained, she really related to director Chloe Zhao‘s vision of having the star-studded cast, which also includes Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry and Salma Hayek, being similar to their respective alien characters. “I don’t think we realized that until we really got there,” she told EW. “It really felt like she was pulling out of us something that was more personal, from a deeper side of ourselves. She wasn’t looking to put something on top of us, like a character. She was looking for us to reveal ourselves as the character.”
Before filming began on the highly-anticipated Marvel flick, which hits theaters on Nov. 5, 2021, Angelina was admittedly nervous about being part of this major blockbuster project. But that all changed once she got on set with her fellow Eternals. “Standing there next to each other, the first time we all stood in our suits together and took off our secrecy cloaks and had to stand there for the shot, what you felt was just a lot of support,” Angelina told EW. “We were smiling at each other, and there was just a lot of kindness,” the actress added.
Since filming wrapped on Eternals in Feb. 2021, Angelina has been back on mom duty to her kids Maddox, 19, Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 15, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 13. Together, the big family has enjoyed shopping days this summer in Beverly Hills, New York City and Paris. Angelina even enjoyed a solo trip to Venice, Italy in late July, where she was spotted getting into a water taxi with a few adult companions to head to dinner.
As fans know, Angelina and Brad’s custody battle has been going on for years, and things don’t seem to be getting better between the exes. Brad was granted joint custody of the kids minus Maddox, who is legally an adult and no longer subject to the custody battle, in May 2021. But Angelina has fought the legal decision and is intent on having full custody of the five children. “Brangelina” originally linked up romantically in 2005 and married in Aug. 2014, before splitting just two years later.
