Change of plans. Angelina Jolie hinted Brad Pitt’s divorce affected her acting and directing career. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday, April 20, Jolie, who split from Pitt in 2016 after two years of marriage, opened up about why she had to take a break from directing.

“I love directing, but I had a change in my family situation that’s not made it possible for me to direct for a few years,” she said to EW. Jolie explained that, because she wanted to spend more time with her children, she decided to focus more on acting than directing. “I needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so I kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs. That’s really the truth of it,” she said.

In the past decade, Jolie has directed four movies—In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, By The Sea and First They Killed My Father, and starred in seven films, with many of them being voice acting roles. The most recent film Jolie directed was 2017’s First They Killed My Father, which came a year after Jolie and Pitt separated. The couple, who wed in 2014 after almost a decade of dating, were declared legally single in 2019 but still haven’t finalized their divorce as the custody battle over their children continues.

Jolie and Pitt share six kids: Shiloh, 14, Maddox, 19, Vivienne, 12, Knox, 12, Zahara, 16, and Pax, 17. In March 2021, Jolie filed court documents accusing Pitt of domestic violence against her and their children. At the time, a source close to Pitt denied the claims to Entertainment Tonight. “This is just another case of Angelina changing the narrative when it suits her,” the insider said. “Aside from the one accusation that she made in 2016 that was investigated and dismissed, there have never been any other records, police reports or even accusations until it suited her case.” The source continued, “No one else knows what she might say now, but that background is important.”

The 2016 accusation refers to Pitt’s incident with his and Jolie’s eldest son, Maddox. A source told People at the time that an argument started between Pitt and Jolie while they were flying home from France with their kids. The insider claimed that Brad was “drunk” and “there was an argument between him and Angelina.” The source also reported that Maddox tried to defuse the situations, but “there was a parent-child argument which was not handled in the right way and escalated more than it should have.”