Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie share six children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne. Photo / Getty Images
In the latest blow to Brad Pitt, his 17-year-old son Knox removed “Pitt” from his surname on his high-school diploma when he graduated from Fusion Academy in Los Angeles.
That follows 62-year-old Pitt’s son Maddox and daughter Shiloh, who have both legally filed to drop “Pitt” and retain “Jolie”.
Rather than a petulant act of teenage rebellion, this is the fallout of a gruelling, decade-long legal war – sparked, it would seem, by an alleged violent incident on a private jet in 2016, which was shuttling the family between Nice and Los Angeles.
Details of what allegedly transpired during those hours in the air were first revealed in a leaked FBI report in 2022 – and they make for explosive reading.
In the FBI report, Jolie claimed that Pitt “physically and verbally assaulted” her and their children (aged 8 to 15 at the time) during the journey. She also claimed that the children had “experienced lasting physical and mental trauma”.
The report states that Jolie alleged Pitt had been drinking on the plane and that, following a heated interaction with one of the children, he pulled her into the bathroom, “grabbed her by the shoulders”, shook her and shouted: “You’re f***ing up this family”.
Jolie alleged that two of the children “were outside the door crying, and asked, ‘Are you OK Mommy?’”, and that Pitt yelled back, “No, Mommy’s not OK. She’s crazy”.
Jolie claimed one child then shouted back; “It’s not her, it’s you, you p***k”, at which point, per Jolie’s allegations, Pitt ran towards the child as if to attack them, and Jolie was forced to intervene, grabbing him from behind to hold him back.
Just days after disembarking from that fateful flight at Hollywood Burbank Airport, Jolie filed for divorce and full custody of the couple’s children, and the FBI and Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) opened investigations into Pitt.
The actor was never arrested or charged, and a source close to the situation told The Telegraph that the DCFS closed their investigation that same year without any findings against him. Regardless, the family has never been the same since.
The couple share six children: Maddox, 24, who was adopted from Cambodia; Pax, 22, adopted from Vietnam; Zahara, 21, adopted from Ethiopia; and biological children, Shiloh, 20, and twins, Knox and Vivienne, 17. The current breakdown is a grim closing chapter on the once-glamorous love story of one of Hollywood’s most iconic couples.
One source, who spoke to The Telegraph on condition of anonymity, has pointed the finger of blame squarely at Jolie’s camp.
“This has been a long-standing effort of intense and deliberate alienation from their father. Brad has made efforts over the years to maintain relationships with his children, but they’ve been manipulated against him.”
They added: “Brad has never shied away from the fact that what happened in 2016 was not great, and he’s been sober and made every effort to work on himself.
“People make mistakes. It’s a real shame. No children should be alienated from their parents.”
In recent years, Pitt’s children have indeed seemed determined to distance themselves from their father – and not just by renouncing the Pitt name.
In 2020, shortly after Pitt won an Oscar and dedicated it to his children, his son, Pax, then 16, posted a furious tirade on Instagram.
Pax wrote of Pitt: “Happy Father’s Day to this world-class a**hole! You time and time again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person”.
Pax claimed Pitt made his children “tremble in fear”, and alleged that Pitt had made their lives “constant hell”. He concluded by calling his father a “f***ing awful human being”.
Speaking to , a separate source has disputed any involvement from the children’s mother, arguing that if Pitt “doesn’t have a relationship with his children, it’s because he wasn’t honest about his actions, and it affected the trust between them – it’s been very hard for the kids”.
The source added: “[The couple’s children] also make their own decisions, and attempting to disparage those choices is really disrespectful to them.
“If they choose to distance themselves from him, it comes from that pain and harm. It’s shameful for him to try to paint himself as a victim.”
Shortly before the much-discussed incident on the private flight from France to Los Angeles in September 2016, the family had convened at their Provencal property, Chateau Miraval.
Pitt flew in from Croatia, where he was developing an eco-friendly luxury resort, and Jolie from a Syrian refugee camp she was visiting in Jordan.
Some workers on the Miraval estate called an idyllic alfresco meal the family shared the night before their flight “the Last Supper”, according to a 2023 Vanity Fair piece. The next morning, they travelled to the private jet terminal in Nice – their last trip as a family.
The Pitt-Jolies frequently travelled by private plane. In fact, they had spent a previous summer shuttling their children between Australia, where Jolie was directing her film, Unbroken, as well as Hawaii and the UK, where Pitt was filming Fury.
So, it wasn’t unusual for them to take a chartered Bombardier Global Express – which typically features a spacious cabin with conference-table-style seating and an aft lounge or sleeping area. What was unusual was the dramatic row that erupted aboard this luxurious vessel.
Six years after the incident, Jolie made further claims that while she was holding on to him, Pitt threw himself backwards into an aeroplane seat to dislodge her, which injured her back and elbow, and that “the children rushed in and all bravely tried to protect each other”, but Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face”. The filing also states that Pitt then continued drinking, and that he poured beer on both Jolie and the children, causing US$25,000 ($43,000) worth of damage to the plane’s interior.
In 2016, the FBI – who was called to investigate since the incident took place on a plane under their special aircraft jurisdiction – closed their investigation and cleared Pitt of any wrongdoing.
A representative for Pitt said in a statement provided to CNN in 2022 that Jolie’s newer claims were “unsubstantiated”, continuing: “Brad has accepted responsibility for what he did, but will not for things he didn’t do. These new allegations are completely untrue”.
Since the incident, Pitt has admitted to a problem with alcohol, telling GQ in 2017 that he had to “step away” from it, explaining: “I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional. I was good”.
While accepting an award in 2020, Pitt thanked Bradley Cooper, saying: “I got sober because of this guy and every day has been happier since”.
Speaking again to GQ, in 2022, Pitt revealed he had been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings after finding a “really cool men’s group” which was “private and selective”.
The row on the plane set in motion a series of events which would lead to the family’s estrangement, but was by no means the end of the acrimony between the couple.
In the intervening years, Pitt and Jolie have executed their divorce in the most bitter terms.
Much of the fighting has been over Chateau Miraval, which seems to have become a proxy war for their personal hatred. The couple bought the property in an equal partnership with winemaker, Marc Perrin, in 2011 for a reported US$60m ($104.5m).
In 2014, the loved-up pair held their private wedding ceremony in the property’s Romanesque chapel.
But, following their divorce, Jolie sold her shares in 2021 to Tenute Mondo – a subsidiary of Yuri Shefler’s Stoli Group – because, according to her lawyers, she had become “uncomfortable” about being involved with the selling of alcohol.
At the time, the entire property was worth about US$164m ($275m).
Jolie also claimed, in court documents filed in 2025: “The children and I have never again set foot on the property, given its connection to the painful events leading to the divorce.”
The sale sparked the so-called “War of the Rosé”. Pitt filed legal complaints in 2022, claiming the couple had previously agreed that neither would sell their stake without the other’s approval. Jolie denied that and filed a counterclaim, saying Pitt was waging a “vindictive war” against her.
However, Jolie’s lawyers claimed that she had originally proposed selling her shares to Pitt in 2021, but he demanded she sign an “all-encompassing” non-disclosure agreement as part of the deal and “agreed to being silenced”. Pitt’s representative declined to comment on that claim. But his lawyers have accused Jolie of helping to launch a “hostile” takeover of the wine business that he had “carefully built”, and that she had “sought to inflict harm” on him via the sale.
That case continues, but regardless of the outcome in the courts, it seems the couple’s children have made up their own minds.
Shiloh was the first to submit a formal legal filing dropping “Pitt” from her name in 2024, on her 18th birthday. That year also saw Vivienne simply use “Jolie” as her surname on the playbill for the Broadway musical, The Outsiders, for which her mother acted as a producer and Vivienne worked as an assistant.
Then, in May 2025, when Zahara graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, she was announced as “Zahara Marley Jolie” before collecting her diploma. She also used “Jolie” when she was welcomed as a special guest for the Pearls of Purpose Foundation’s Dearest Mother and Daughter brunch in April, where she waxed lyrical about her “unique, almost kindred relationship” with her mother. Then, earlier this month, Maddox and Knox seemed to follow suit.
Jolie, meanwhile, has put her US$29.9m Los Angeles estate on the market – it was once owned by Cecil B DeMille, and was purchased by the actress in 2017 following the split. In 2024, she told the Hollywood Reporter that she had remained in LA “because I have to be here from a divorce, but as soon as [the children] are 18, I’ll be able to leave”. The youngest of her children, Knox and Vivienne, will turn 18 in July.
Could this be the closing chapter of the torrid Jolie-Pitt saga – the final fallout from that infamous plane ride? Either way, geographic distance will surely come as a relief to the warring couple – and to their beleaguered children.