For the most part, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s six children — Maddox, 24; Pax, 22; Zahara, 21; Shiloh, 19; and 17-year-old twins, Knox and Vivienne — live pretty private lives. However, one of the kids just shared some rare insight into life as Angie’s daughter.
For context, Zahara is the oldest of the three girls. Angelina adopted her from Ethiopia when she was just 6 months old in July 2005.
Brad and Angelina were newly dating at this point, and less than a year after Zahara officially joined the family, the Fight Club star began the formal process of legally adopting her and her older brother Maddox, too.
It’s probably worth noting that we don’t know much about Zahara’s current relationship with her dad. Since Brad and Angelina’s 2016 separation, it has been widely reported that the children are estranged from their famous father, with some of the kids, including Zahara, notably opting to drop “Pitt” from their last names.
Now, 21-year-old Zahara appears to be thriving. She’s a graduating senior at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she was joined by her mom over the weekend at a mother-daughter brunch for the Pearls of Purpose Foundation.
At the charity brunch, both Angelina and Zahara gave speeches. And, given how private Zahara is, her comments have caught people’s attention. Speaking about the “value of mother-daughter relationships,” she began by saying she found it “challenging to find the words” to describe her bond with her mom, because they “have a unique, almost kindred, relationship that can be hard to put into words.”
“Our love for each other is a found one. I was adopted at 6 months old and given some of the most special and loving people as my siblings, with a mom who raised us on the value of helping others, being kind, and always striving for growth as people,” she said. “These values may sound simple, but in a world where kindness is overlooked and helping others comes at a cost, I am grateful to have had a role model to show me what it looks like to be a decent human being.”
Describing Angelina as a “superhero,” Zahara said she spends her life trying to figure out how her mom “does it.” “She’s the most selfless, loving, and understanding woman who I get to call my mom,” she said, before going on to talk a little bit about the “change” that came with leaving home and going to college.
“I realized it would be challenging to include my mom and family in these worlds without being able to directly share the effects. With the addition of the public life that we live, it can be hard to find those special and intimate moments without being overwhelmed with the many eyes that are on us,” she said.
Zahara continued: “This has never stopped my mom from being curious about all that I’m learning in and outside of my classrooms at Spelman and having many understandable questions about sorority life and my experiences. My family embraces the newness and strives to understand these meaningful organizations in my life as I share my experiences.”
Adorably, she also said that being the oldest sister in the family meant that she sometimes took on the “second mother role,” saying, “I loved caring for my younger siblings and mirroring the care and compassion my mom showed us.”
So, given how rare it is to get such personal insight from the Jolie kids, people online are deeply moved by Zahara’s comments. “Zahara’s gorgeous, and it’s so heartwarming to hear about the special bond Angelina has with her kids,” one Reddit user wrote. “She’s really raising such compassionate people!”
Plenty of other fans took the time to praise Angelina as a parent, too. “There are a lot of ethical questions around international adoption… but Angelina really seems to have done a good and sensitive job with it,” someone wrote. “I love how connected she’s kept them with their born cultures.”
As well as people discussing the “pointed” way that Zahara made absolutely no mention of Brad, Reddit users also commented on the widespread observation that Zahara often resembles her mom, despite not being biologically related.
“It’s crazy how I can see familial resemblance in her adopted children,” one user wrote. “I know it’s a brain trick because obviously I know they’re her kids, but it also just feels like they love their mom so much and were cared for by her so much that they just naturally took on their mother’s traits.”
The relationship between these two is magical! You can watch a video of Zahara’s speech here.
Some of these Reddit comments were edited for clarity or length.