Her father was never there for her or her family, even during her most difficult days.
The relationship between parents and kids is extremely important during the formative years. The circumstances in which they grow up and the people they are around, form them into the person they become in the future. A troubled childhood can have lifetime effects on the psyche of a child. The life of Angelina Jolie is the perfect example.
Before the actress became the woman who is known all over the world, she was just like any other person who has faced problems in their lives. Her tumultuous relationship with her father, Jon Voight is not hidden from anyone. While they've reconciled, the path was filled with occasions of sadness, warmth, connection, and most of all the darkness, which Jolie experienced first hand.
It all started when she was a baby. Voight, an actor himself, met a beautiful woman, Marcheline Bertrand, on a blind date and they fell in love. Bertrand was just 21 when the couple tied the knot. By the time she was 28, she was divorced. According to Republic World, Jolie was just a baby, and her brother not much older than her when her father decided to leave their family.
Susan Margaret, the mother of a childhood friend of Jolie, told Express UK, "Jon Voight was a terrible father to her back then. He cheated on her mother. Marcheline was broken-hearted. She told me Jon had emotionally abused her. She said he had a thing for a Hollywood starlet. Angelina had a difficult time growing up with what was going on. She has a lot of hostility toward her dad."
Jolie recalling her mother and her dreams said, "She studied to be an actress but married my father and by 28 was divorced with two kids." She added, "She gave up her dreams...I am my mother's daughter."
When Voight left her and her family, her mother specifically suffered a lot. According to Andrew Morton's Biography titled Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography, he reveals that the divorce of 1976 left Jolie's mother so broken that she virtually abandoned her kids. According to the reports by US Weekly, there was a time when the mother and daughter were living in separate apartments where Jolie was taken care of by a revolving staff.
Maybe it was the abandonment and the need for love and affection, Jolie's behavior turned erratic with intoxication, self-harm, and a rocky love life. Talking to Radar Online, Jolie's former caregiver revealed some shocking things about the Maleficent actress. “She just liked that little bit of pain. She liked that edge,” said Cis Rundle, who entered the actress's life when she was 3-year-old.
Divulging even further, she said, “I carried her into the hospital. She was in that anorexic stage…it was one of her stages. She didn’t stay, it got worked out. But Marcheline got scared that she wasn’t eating.” Rundle also revealed that Jolie didn't like going to school as she was bullied as a kid because of her lips. "They used to call her ‘Ubangi Lips,'” Rundle recalled. “They made fun of her because of her lips and the girls were mean to her. She has these broad shoulders and long legs, she moved like a gazelle," she said.
At one point Jolie was so lost that self-mutilation gave her gratification. She was just 20 when she married her first husband, British actor Jonny Lee Miller. She scrawled his name on her white shirt with her blood at the wedding ceremony. Just three years later she was divorced in 1999 and tied the knot with actor Billy Bob Thornton. He was 20 years her senior but both were smitten by each other. Around their neck, they wore vials of each other's blood. Jolie was just exploring the different side of her during this time but some psychologists claimed that her self-destructive behavior was the result of the trauma she suffered because of an absentee father.
Rundle did not forget to mention the infamous kiss during the 2001 Oscars. Jolie kissed her brother James Haven in 2001 Oscar ceremony while walking on the red carpet and the paparazzi went crazy. Rumors of an incestuous relationship surfaced but Rundle revealed the truth. “The day she kissed Jamie at the Oscars, it was the first day Marcheline was treated for cancer. They left the hospital together and got ready together,” she said.
She continued, "Nobody in the world knew that they spent the day in the hospital. It was like, ‘Look where we’re at now.’ But the world saw something incestual. It was meant to be ‘Here we are.’ They only ever had each other. They had a very tight relationship with each other and their mother.” Jolie's mother passed away at the age of 56 in 2007 due to ovarian and breast cancer.
Even though the father and daughter shared a rough relationship, they reconciled briefly during the filming of Tomb Raider (2001) where they played reel-life father and daughter but it didn't last long. Jolie again tried reaching out to him in 2007.
Talking about the incident she said, “I think sometimes you have to distance yourself from relationships you feel are unhealthy for you. But we have spoken and we are going to try to get to know each other and maybe try not to be this daddy and daughter, but to be there for each other as friends in the coming years," reported Express UK. Now her father shares his moments with his grandkids through occasional Skype calls.
References:
https://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/77590/Jon-Voight-My-bitter-feud-with-Angelina
