Hello! Magazine has a new interview with Angelina Jolie. The mother of six repeats some of the same things she told W Magazine about her twins being sweet together and smelling and touching each other and how her children love traveling. She also gives plenty of new information about her family life and children. Angelina tells Hello! that after her mother, French Canadian Marcheline Bertrand, died she decided to move to France because she knew it would have pleased her. That’s also the motivation for her family to learn to speak French.

Angelina addresses the fact that there are always rumors about her family and says that doesn’t bother her and that she strives to live with love and laughter.

Hello! just gives biographical background for these quotes and doesn’t list the questions that were asked of Angelina, so I’ll include them here without the surrounding text as it doesn’t explain the context anyway.

On not caring about the rumors and living with love
“I am fortunate enough to live with my favorite people in the world, including Brad, who is my best friend and an amazing father. Our life is very, very hard work, but it’s also a lot of fun. We don’t take much notice of the rumours, to be honest – people have been spreading rumours about me for years. We have fun, we have each other, and we have a lot of love in our life. And anybody who has love in their live has something that is much more important than anything else.”

Jokes about double nursing her twins, says they nurse every three hours
“Considering that during my hair and make-up session I had one twin on each breast, it’s amazing I’m together at all,” she laughs. “They’re good babies, though, and pretty much on schedule, although they’re a little jet-lagged right now. They pretty much eat every three hours, so I’ve arranged breaks in my day around that.

“They’re very sweet together, and a great thing about twins is how much company they are for each other. You see them together, and they’re looking at each other, they smell each other, they put their hands on each other, and it’s just beautiful to watch. You reach a point where you almost think that to have one baby alone would be kind of lonely.”

On her children being loud but fun
“It’s a big, loud, busy family. The kids are all great friends, and we all have a lot of fun together. They’re all great travelers, too, and I think partly because there are so many of them, they’re able to make themselves at home anywhere. They go into an empty room, take it over and make it their home, which is a wonderful gift.”

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, October 21, 2008, subtitles added]

Angelina then gets wistful when she talks about her mom. Again, the article doesn’t include any of the interviewers questions and it’s hard to tell how this whole conversation came about. It’s not like it takes a lot to get Angelina talking, though.

On her late mom: she moved to France for her
In January of last year, Angelina’s mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of cancer aged only 56, and Angelina – who is still struggling with her loss – admits that it is hard to accept that Marcheline will never know these latest grandchildren.

“They’re the first babies I’ve had without her,” she says, softly. “She was an amazing mom and she shouldn’t have passed away so young.

“She was partly French-Canadian, and she always loved France, so when I was deciding where to have the children, it was just a very comforting idea to do it in France, because I knew she would have loved it. That’s a reason why we’re all learning French, too, because she always wanted my children to speak the language. It’s a beautiful language and a beautiful culture, and being in that part of the world always reminds me of her.

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, October 21, 2008]

Angelina says that she based her character in the film Changeling on her mother, who she describes as “a very soft and quiet woman who was very shy to speak up for for herself, but when it came to her kids she could find a way.” She mentions that she carried photos of her mother with her on set and that she tried to emulate her.

She also talks about how she manages a sense of normalcy for her kids, and how they explain the paparazzi to them. Angelina has a lot of praise for my city, Berlin, where she’s been living for a couple of weeks. I have to admit it’s very family-friendly.

On Berlin: It’s a great place for families and they have friends there
“We’re in Berlin right now because Brad’s making a film there, and that’s great because we have lots of friends there. Brad knows a lot of German architects, so we know lots of families with kids, who we’ve been able to spend time with.

Shiloh had a playdate
“We’ve only been there a week, but there’s lots of great stuff for children in Berlin which I didn’t even know about – children’s gymnasiums, indoor playgrounds, zoos. It’s a great place for a family, and the kids are already picking up some German. Certainly Shiloh is – she went on a playdate, and she kept saying ‘Nein, nein, nein,’ so at least she knows that word!”

On other families respecting their space
“When we go to fun-type places with the kids, we can’t usually do it the normal way. We have to go after hours, or we have to invite every single other family we know in town and take over the whole place. But we do also take a chance sometimes and sneak into places just as a family – we brave it for a while and hope it goes well.

“Usually, places where there are other parents with children are okay – other parents are much more respectful of our privacy than many people because they understand what it’s like just to want to be with your kids. Parents are much kinder to us than some other members of the public.”

On how they explain the paparazzi to their children
“When the kids ask us why people are taking our pictures, we say, ‘Mommy and Daddy make movies and that’s why some people want to know about us.’ We want to make sure that they know there’s nothing special or different about us – it is just a fact of our lives that we happen to make movies so people want to take our pictures. But it is something that is hard to explain to children or make sense of, because the fact is that it is not something that makes sense – it’s just plain odd. But it’s our life.”

The interview is incredibly long and as you sift through it you realize why Hello! made the decision not to include any of the interviewer’s questions. It’s hard enough to read everything Angelina said, but that’s part Hello!’s style, and part Angelina’s effusive nature. I’ll include some more details in another article today if you’re interested. She went on to talk about her children’s favorite things that they bring with them around the globe and discussed how she packs light. Let me know if you’re interested in those other parts of the interview and I’ll post them. She sure goes all out to promote her films and is not shy about talking to reporters.

Photos are ones you’ve already seen before of Angelina at the Changeling premiere and out in NY at an art shop with some of her kids on 10/4/08. She is also shown with Brad in New Orleans on 10/6 and 10/7. Credit: Bauergriffinonline and Fame