From what we’ve seen of Angelina Jolie’s kids over the years, we’ve sort of made assumptions about their personalities or vibes. To me, Zahara seems the most poised and perhaps the most similar to Angelina. Shiloh seems extremely loyal to her mom and her siblings, and I know she’s a dancer and probably very artsy. The two oldest boys, Maddox and Pax, seem protective of Angelina and happy to work behind-the-scenes. Vivienne is a theater geek and she’ll likely end up in that world behind-the-scenes too. Knox is a mystery! But anyway, I find it fascinating that there were so many predictions, back in the day, that Angelina was a terrible mother and her kids would end up being awful brats and maladjusted adults. Crash cut to the present day, and they all seem well-adjusted, family-focused and interested in charity and humanitarian work. They all seem pretty private too. When Angelina was in Santa Barbara, she talked about how none of the kids want to be on stage or in front of a camera.

While Angelina Jolie is more than happy to grace the movie screens — she says her kids are not. The Maria star, 49, shared during a panel at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Wednesday, Feb. 5, that she didn’t think that any of her six children had an “affinity” for movies.

“No. I don’t know, that’s not my doing,” Jolie, who received the Maltin Modern Master Award at the Festival, said. “I always wanted them to be around film because I wanted them to know as a part of — it’s such a wonderful family, to be creative, to be an artist, to be… They’re not interested. They really don’t like any of the celebrity part of it, especially Shiloh hates it. I think in a very healthy way they don’t … It’s not a normal thing. It’s a silly thing really.”

However, the Eternals actress also noted that it didn’t mean her children — Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 18, and twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline, 16, whom she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt, 61 — haven’t connected with the art of film in their own ways.

“Yes, they’ve been on set with me,” Jolie continued while appearing on the panel. “And some of them dance, some of them paint, some of them love theater, but none of them are dying to be on screen.”

She said the closest her children have gotten to the screen is doing work behind the scenes on a film. Two of her sons, Maddox and Pax, did some assistant director work behind the screens of Maria. “It’s good to start them in working,” she said. “[You’ve] got to run around and do anything for everybody. And so they’ve been doing that in a few films. And then Pax was doing some of the photography work.”

The actress’ daughter Vivienne has also dipped her toes into the entertainment world co-producing Broadway’s The Outsiders alongside her mom in early 2024. She also worked as an assistant on production — something Jolie told PEOPLE she took “very seriously.”

While her kids aren’t clamoring to follow in her movie star footsteps, Jolie also shared at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival that it was important for her as a mother to give her children “space” to figure out what they want to do with their lives. “And I think for my children … I hope I’m giving them space to figure out who they actually are and something that they want to live for that’s authentic to them so it holds in their life,” she said.

[From People]

This is something I always think about with nepo-babies, is that many of them were actually encouraged and enabled by their famous parents. Cindy Crawford absolutely pushed Kaia into modeling, and there are so many examples of that among the nepo-baby class. Angelina isn’t doing that – she’s doing nepotism in the right way, in my opinion. She helps her kids get jobs within the industry, but jobs like “assistant to the producer” and “one of the set photographers” and “production assistant.” She’s also not trying to force any of them into being on camera. It will be so funny if, after years of Jolie-Pitt drama and terrible tabloid press, all of the kids end up being productive, quiet people who have stable lives and pay their taxes.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.