Angelina Jolie excited to move away from America and Brad Pitt drama

Angelina Jolie is preparing for a long-desired fresh start that revolves around living outside the United States and far away from her ex-husband Brad Pitt and the experience of their painful, protracted divorce.

People magazine confirmed reports that Jolie is putting her historic Los Angeles home up for sale as she explores a move abroad. In 2017, Jolie bought the home, an estate in the posh Los Feliz neighborhood that once belonged to legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, so that she could comply with court-ordered custody arrangements she had with Pitt as they negotiated their divorce.

The couple share six children — Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 17 — and Jolie felt obligated to have them live near Pitt while they were growing up. Pitt also had an estate in Los Feliz.

“I wanted it to be close to their dad, who is only five minutes away,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2019. “As soon as they’re 18, I’ll be able to leave.”

Jolie’s youngest children turn 18 in July 2026, which is when Jolie will presumably feel free to leave. She and Pitt also finalized their divorce last year after a messy, high-profile custody battle that began after she filed for divorce in 2016.

Jolie has long said that she “never wanted to live in L.A. full time,” but remained there for the sake of her children — even as several, if not all, of her children have reportedly become estranged from their father.

“She’s ready for a life that isn’t centered in Los Angeles,” a source told People magazine. The Oscar-winning actor and director also became a well-regarded international humanitarian with her work as a special envoy for the UN Refugee Agency. She has “a lot of projects she’s excited about” that she can pursue now that she has more “flexibility” about where she can live, the source also told People.

Once Jolie leaves the United States, she is reportedly considering splitting her time between Cambodia, France and  countries in Africa, the Daily Mail reported. Jolie adopted her oldest son Maddox in Cambodia in 2002 and she already owns a home in a rural area of that Southeast Asian country, leading some to expect that Cambodia will become her home base.

But the Daily Mail also reported that France and Africa “remain close to her heart” because her twins were born in Nice, France, while she adopted Zahara from Ethiopia and gave birth to Shiloh in Namibia.

The news about Jolie’s plans come as people online are debating the choice of fellow Hollywood star George Clooney to obtain French citizenship. Clooney has said in interviews that he, his wife, Amal Clooney, and their 8-year-old twins mostly live on a farm in southern France, which he said is a better environment than Hollywood in which to raise their children.

The Clooneys also have become the most recent American celebrities, following Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell, to talk publicly about relocating to Europe, with DeGeneres and O’Donnell saying they didn’t want to live in the United States under a second Trump presidency.