Angelina Jolie recalls crushing moment famous dad won Oscar with his mistress

Angelina Jolie gave an incredibly personal speech while picking up her Maltin Modern Master Award during the 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday. The 49-year-old actress reflected on her beloved late mother Marcheline Bertrand – who died in 2007 aged 56 from ovarian and breast cancer – and revealed the heartbreaking moment her mum watched her famous dad Jon Voight accepted an Oscar alongside his mistress.

The Tomb Raider actress was less than a year old when her mother and father separated in 1976 amid affair speculation following five years of marriage. The divorce was finalised in 1980. In 1979 Angelina’s mother watched her estranged husband win an Oscar for best actor for his role in Coming Home alongside his mistress and co-star Stacey Pickren while she was at home with two small children. Pickren and Voight, now 86, starred together in three films – Coming Home, Lookin’ to Get Out, and Runaway Train.

‘My mother’s dream was to be an actor. I think my mother’s mother’s dream was to be an actor,’ Angelina explained to Leonard Maltin onstage the Arlington Theatre. ‘When she was in her twenties, because she had me when she was very young, she was divorced to a very famous man and she was home with her babies in an apartment watching him win an Oscar with the other woman,’ Angelina said.

‘It was kind of just a part of our family history,’ she said. ‘I remember thinking that [Marcheline] was there for me and my brother and that was the choice she made. And how she must have felt on that night always really stuck with me.’. When it was Angelina’s turn to win at the 2000 Oscar ceremony, she thought of her mother, remembering: ‘To have that moment, to get off that stage and call her and say, “It’s yours” – and I gave it to her – one of the best moments of my life.’.

During her acceptance speech, Angelina tearily shared memories of her late mother recalling how Marcheline ’embraced’ a life of stardom through her daughter. She remembered how her mother lived vicariously through her prior to her passing. ‘I think of my mother … she had to give up her dreams of a creative life but she embraced that side of mine,’ she said. The Tomb Raider star also revealed that her mother would write her letters addressed to the character she was playing at the time.

She added: ‘”Dear Gia,” “Dear Lisa Rowe,” “Dear Lara Croft” – and for the last 16 years, I haven’t had those letters.’. Angelina also revealed at the festival that she initially turned up to the set of Tomb Raider smoking two packets of cigarettes a day, but had a lifestyle overhaul for her ‘life-changing’ Lara Croft role. ‘I admittedly came [in] smoking two packs a day and completely had to change my health and my life and discover that I could do things I didn’t know I could do,’ she said.

‘For Tomb Raider there were a few months of just nothing but multiple training sessions a day: morning, noon and night,’ the Oscar-winning star recalled. ‘And I didn’t want anything but good food, water, and sleep at a certain point. ‘I was in training and that’s what your body [wants]… You change,’ Angelina said, adding: ‘I never did it again…Well, I think I did once or twice.’.

The 2001 film and sequel marked her international break out as a Hollywood superstar, but she’d appeared in a number of films in the 1990s including Girl, Interrupted, alongside Winona Ryder. The actress has enjoyed a star turn of late with her portrayal of Maria Callas in the biopic about the legendary opera star, and noted after taking on such a part that she would be ‘nothing’ without the love of her own mother.

She said: ‘I try to imagine sometimes what she would write, and she would probably have told Maria that she loved her because Maria had many things but she never had a mother’s love. ‘I would be absolutely nothing without mine. She passed away many years ago at this time of year, so it’s always this weather that reminds me of her.’. ‘And that feeling and that sensibility that makes that actually hard for me is part of what is my work and what connects many artists to their work, and I know I’m not alone in this!’.

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