Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Through the Years: A Look Back on Their Highs and Lows

The actors had been together for over a decade and married in 2014 before filing for divorce this year

By Samantha Schnurr Sep 20, 2016 4:47 PMTags
Brad Pitt, Angelina JolieSteve Granitz/Getty Images

After more than a decade together, Angelina Jolie has called for an end to her marriage to Brad Pitt

The news may come as a shock to fans who have watched this Hollywood couple blossom before the public's eyes over the last 12 years. Since Jolie and Pitt were notably private about their personal lives, Jolie's filing for divorce could not have been easily predicted.

The Oscar winner cited the standard irreconcilable differences, offering little insight into what had actually sparked the split. Jolie requested physical custody of their six children and asked that Pitt get visitation rights.

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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's Kids Through the Years

The sudden breakup comes as a far cry from the endearing public image they've presented since they initially made their romance public. 

Having since raised six children, expanded their blockbuster careers and faced a double mastectomy together, the former A-list couple have juggled life's highs and lows at each other's side. 

Here's a look back on those crucial personal moments—the good and the bad of Brangelina. 

20th Century Fox

January 2005: Pitt and his wife of five years, Jennifer Aniston, announce their separation. Two months later, Aniston files for divorce citing irreconcilable differences and it is finalized in October. We "happily remain committed and caring friends with great love and admiration for one another," they say in a statement. 

June 2005: Mr. and Mrs. Smith debuts, marking Pitt and Jolie's first appearance in a film together. The movie sparks rumors that the actors are romantically involved off-camera, though they both rebuff the claims. 

"To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that," Jolie tells Today's Ann Curry. "I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." 

July 2005: Brad travels with Angelina to Ethiopia to adopt her second child, daughter Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt

January 2006: Pitt becomes the adoptive father of Zahara and Maddox. "One day, Maddox 'just out of the blue called him Dad,'" Jolie tells Vogue. "It was amazing. We were playing with cars on the floor of a hotel room, and we both heard it and didn't say anything and just looked at each other. So that was probably the most defining moment, when he decided that we would all be a family."

May 2006: Pitt and Jolie welcome the birth of their first biological child together, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, in Namibia.

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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Divorce: All of Their Sweetest Quotes About Love and Marriage

March 2007: Jolie adopts 3-year-old Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt from Vietnam. 

July 2008: Jolie gives birth to the couple's twins, Knox and Vivienne, in Nice. The couple donates a reported $14 million from the babies' first photo to charity.

People

April 2012: After insisting they would not marry until everyone in the United States would be legally able to do so, Brad proposes to Angelina with a massive sparkler.

"It is a promise for the future and their kids are very happy," Pitt's rep tells E! News. "There's no date set at this time."

February 2013: After losing her mother to ovarian cancer and learning she carries a faulty BRCA1 gene, Jolie undergoes a preventive double mastectomy. "All I want…is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children," Pitt tells London's Evening Standard"This is a happy day for our family."

Watch: Brad Pitt Talks Being Directed By Wife Angelina

August 2014: The couple marries at Château Miraval in France during a nondemoinational civil ceremony featuring all six of their children. 

"It'll be a lovely celebration to start life in the new house," a source tells E! News a month earlier. "They want to marry there at that house and celebrate how far they've come as a family, as a couple, and individually in just 10 years."

March 2015: Jolie has her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to prevent ovarian cancer after learning she has a 50 percent risk of developing the cancer in the future.

"I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn't something where I was gonna feel less of a woman, because my husband wasn't gonna let that happen," she tells NBC's Tom Brokaw.   

December 2015: Jolie and Pitt star in By The Sea, a film about a collapsing marriage. "I'm counting on the audience to know that if it was close to us at all, we could never make this film," she assures in an interview with Brokaw. "It's because we're actually very, very stable and these aren't our issues."

The film, which marks their first together since Mr. and Mrs. Smith, receives unfavorable reviews and limited release. 

August: The couple celebrate their second wedding anniversary. 

September: Jolie files for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.