Marriage, Interrupted
They flaunted their love with his and hers tattoos, blood-filled pendants and side by side cemetery plots but the two-year marriage between Hollywood's most eccentric couple is now on the rocks.
Angelina Jolie, who recently admitted that she has not spoken to husband Billy Bob Thornton in at least a month, has filed for divorce, citing irreconciable differences.
The divorce papers were filed by Jolie on Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. The Oscar-winning couple, who have been married for two years, recently adopted an 11-month-old boy, Maddox, from Cambodia.
Jolie told Us Weekly in an interview released Wednesday that she and husband Billy Bob Thornton had been living apart in separate hotels for four months and had not seen each other since June 3.
Jolie said she was both angry and sad at the breakdown of the two-year marriage, whose future has been the subject of frenzied Hollywood gossip for weeks.
"I'm angry. I'm sad. It's a very difficult and sad time," Jolie was quoted as telling Us Weekly in its August 5 edition.
"Sometimes you don't see things coming, even though they are happening. It was a real deep connection, a deep marriage, so it's not that simple to say this or that one thing caused the problems. It's clear to me that our priorities shifted overnight," she told the magazine.
Us Weekly said Thornton, whose recent movies include "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "Monster's Ball," declined to comment for the article. His publicist would only say, "They remain very married."
Jolie, 27, wed Thornton, 46, after a whirlwind courtship in Las Vegas in 2000, the same year she won a best-supporting actress Oscar for her role as an unhinged teenager in "Girl, Interrupted." Thornton was dating actress Laura Dern when he became involved with Jolie. It was Thornton's fifth marriage and her second.
Thornton won an Oscar in 1997 for best screenplay for "Sling Blade," for which he was also nominated for best actor.
Jolie and Thornton, a maverick actor, writer and director, met on the set of the 1999 air traffic control comedy "Pushing Tin".
Jolie said she did not want to start "a war of words" with Thornton, adding; "I don't want to attack him publicly. That's not what I am about."
But it appeared that the Cambodian orphan the couple adopted earlier this year had come between them, adding to friction between Jolie's role as a United Nation goodwill ambassador and Thornton's pursuit of a music career.
The baby boy, called Maddox and now 11 months old, was allowed into the United States in early June. But Thornton left almost immediately to go on tour with his band to support his country-rock album "Private Radio."
"He's focused on his music and his career," said Jolie. "I'm focused on my baby. (Maddox) is so important to me. It comes down to what's important to you. Good for him. But I have other priorities," she said, adding that she would like to adopt more children.
Jolie said Thornton had declined to accompany her on one ofher many trips to refugee camps in her work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
She declined to discuss rumors of Thornton's infidelity while on tour with the band during April and May, except to say that "he hasn't been as honorable as he could be."
Regarding the split, Thornton, 46, issued a statement Thursday that said only: "It's a sad thing." Representatives of Jolie, 27, refused to comment further.