It’s February 2008. In a way it feels like yesterday, but in another way it was centuries ago. The Hollywood of 2008 is a lot more naïve, less meticulously designed. It is a time when glossy magazines are still flying off the supermarket shelves (and newsstands, which still exist). It is the final days of an era when celebrities, though subject to overexposure and careful analysis of their every move, are still pretty much out of reach; a time when there are scoops and surprises but without the planned circus events of social media (Facebook has been publicly listed for just a year and a half, Twitter is still at an embryonic stage, and Instagram and TikTok don’t even exist yet).
On a relatively small red carpet reserved for independent cinema in the U.S., Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie show up, holding each other by the waist. His hair is spiky and he’s wearing a corduroy jacket and aviator glasses; she’s wearing dark eyeliner and a black dress that conceals nothing: she is pregnant. Again. Unexpectedly. It’s neither a girl nor a boy, but both at once: they are expecting twins. The babies are born a few months later, the last of the six children of the power couple known then as Brangelina.
On July 12 of this year, those babies turn 18. And neither them, nor their parents, nor their siblings, nor Hollywood, nor the star system are anything like what they once were.
For one thing, Brangelina no longer exists. Instead all that’s left is years of resentment and bitter legal battles: divorce agreements that took years to reach, accusations of abuse against Pitt, 62, made by Jolie, 51, and more legal challenges over a French castle and vineyard.
The golden couple turned out to be made out of tin. And their children are the best reflection of that fallout that is much more than just sentimental. The clan has overwhelmingly taken sides, and it’s clear whose side they’re on: Angelina’s. And there is a crystal-clear element that proves it: the children have dropped their father’s surname and kept only Jolie. The twins Knox and Vivienne, now officially adults, are the last to have taken the step.
None of Brad Pitt’s children have kept the Pitt surname. As far as anyone knows, all of them have opted for Jolie, evidencing their close ties to their mother, with whom they all decided to live following their parents’ divorce, after which Pitt lost all possibility of winning back custody. The couple had been together 12 years (but married only two), and announced the split around a decade ago, in September 2016. But it took eight years to formalize the separation, which finally occurred on the last day of 2024.
The complex breakup even involved the FBI at one point —agents asked the children questions and inspected the private plane used by the family following an incident, and followed up on suspicion that Pitt might have abused their eldest child. All of this made the family close in on itself and value its privacy very highly. It is only in recent years, as they have become adults with their own careers and projects, that the public has gotten to know more about the Jolie children.
The process by which they filed to legally drop Pitt from their surname has not been made public —it falls under the state law of California, where they live, and was generally done through lawyers. But it is known that for at least the last two years, all of them have been changing their surnames, although it is unclear whether all the changes have been made official or if some are still informal. According to Arash Hashemi, an L.A.-based lawyer with over 20 years’ experience, the process “is not long or expensive, but it can be very meticulous.” He adds that “if the person changing their name is under 18, the parents must file the petition on the minor’s behalf. Both parents must approve the name change.” The process involves a lot of legal steps, including a formal petition before a court, an ad in a local newspaper announcing the name change intent and the date of the hearing, a background check, and a hearing without any public objections or a criminal record.
The eldest of the six children, Maddox, who was born in August 2001 in Cambodia and adopted by Jolie in 2002 (and later also by Pitt), has already gone through the entire process. In 2021, when he gave testimony supporting his mother in a lawsuit against his father, he introduced himself as Maddox Jolie. In Jolie’s 2025 movie Couture, where he worked as assistant director, he also used Jolie exclusively in the film credits. Legal documents obtained by TMZ showed that the change is final: the 24-year-old asked the judge to be officially known as Maddox Chivan Jolie.
He was the first one to do so informally and the last one to do so legally, but not the only one. Zahara had changed her surname, if only informally, when she introduced herself as Zahara Marley Jolie in a college video. She made the legal change around the same time as Maddox, according to People. In May 2024, as soon as she turned 18, it emerged that Shiloh had also filed for a formal name change and was no longer Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt but just Shiloh Jolie.
Pax, born in November 2003 and adopted in 2007, calls himself Jolie but appears to have legally retained “Pitt.” This is reportedly not due to having a good relationship with his father – on the contrary, they are estranged – but rather with his paternal relatives, most particularly his aunt Julie Pitt, and with his cousins. In fact, Pax is the sibling who has most clearly and publicly attacked his father, saying about him on Instagram that he was “a terrible and despicable person” with “no consideration or empathy toward your 4 youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence.” He went on to write that Pitt would “never understand the damage” he inflicted on his family because he is “incapable of doing so.”
“You have made the lives of those closest to me a constant hell. You may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but the truth will come to light someday,” he added.
According to the lawyer Hashemi, surname changes are “more common than one would think. Some change their first name as well.“ The expert says that people do it for personal or family reasons, with the most common reason being ”when the name on the birth certificate is different from the name they’ve been using since they were a toddler. In order to get a passport or any other official government ID, they need to legally change their name.”
The youngest of the six children have barely had any relationship with their father for the last eight years, when the couple broke up, so it makes sense for them to use “Jolie,” which they’ve been doing practically since then.
Despite being one of the two youngest, Vivienne was quick to go public about the name change. A fan of movies, theater and acting, at the age of four she played Aurora together with her mother in Maleficent. At 15 she was again at her mother’s side as an assistant in the Broadway adaptation of The Outsiders, which was produced by Jolie. In the librettos her name showed up as Vivienne Jolie. Her twin brother, who graduated in June from Fusion Academy, a prestigious private school in L.A., was named as Knox Jolie, Page Six reported.
With barely any public statements about the thorny breakup in all these years, the lives of these young people have been mostly documented through the words and photographs of third parties. Some of these underscored Pitt’s estrangement from his children; others highlighted Jolie’s powerful influence over them. Now that they are all adults, the decision whether to let the public know more about their private lives is theirs to make.
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