NEED TO KNOW
- Brad Pitt is offering his first comments on his finalizing his divorce from Angelina Jolie in December 2024
- “No, I don’t think it was that major of a thing,” Pitt told GQ in a new article about his upcoming movie F1. “Just something coming to fruition. Legally”
- Pitt and Jolie, who share six children, battled over the terms of their divorce for several years after Jolie initially filed to dissolve their marriage in 2016
Brad Pitt is speaking out for the first time about finalizing his divorce from Angelina Jolie after more than eight years of intense legal fighting.
While Pitt, 61, sat down with GQ to discuss his upcoming racing movie F1 in a feature published Wednesday, May 28, the Oscar winner dismissed questions regarding whether he felt “relief” after he and Jolie, 49, reached a settlement in their divorce on Dec. 30, 2024. Jolie had initially filed to dissolve their marriage in September 2016.
“No, I don’t think it was that major of a thing,” Pitt said. “Just something coming to fruition. Legally.”
Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt days after a private plane flight on which she claimed Pitt was abusive to her and their six children. He was not charged by authorities after investigations at the time and Jolie declined to press charges. The actors, who share six children — Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, Knox, 16, and Vivienne, also 16 — began dating in the mid-2000s and married in 2014.
A representative for Pitt declined to confirm or comment on the divorce settlement in December. However, a source close to Pitt told PEOPLE in March that the actor was “happy that the divorce is behind him” and that he and girlfriend Ines de Ramon, whom he has been dating since 2022, are “in a great place.”
Daniele Venturelli/Getty, Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty
James Simon, a lawyer for Jolie, told PEOPLE at the time of the divorce settlement that the actress “has focused on finding peace and healing for their family” in the years since their high-profile divorce battle began. “This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago,” Simon said in that statement. “Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”
Pitt spoke candidly about how his “personal life is always in the news” while discussing F1, in which he and Damson Idris costar as Formula One drivers. “It’s been in the news for 30 years, bro. Or some version of my personal life, let’s put it that way,” he told GQ in the piece. When the outlet asked Pitt whether he viewed making F1 as “a refuge from all the attention” he receives, the actor said, “Um, I don’t see it that way.”
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Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty, Eric Charbonneau/Apple TV+ via Getty
“It’s been an annoyance I’ve had to always deal with in different degrees, large and small, as I do the things I really want to do,” he said of his celebrity status. “So, it’s always been this kind of nagging time suck or waste of time, if you let it be that, I don’t know. I don’t know. Mostly I feel pretty…. My life is fairly contained. It feels pretty warm and secure with my friends, with my loves, with my fam, with my knowledge of who I am, that, you know, it’s like this fly buzzing around a little bit.”
F1 releases in theaters June 27.
