James Haven, Angelina Jolie’s brother, has opened up about his role in her split from Brad Pitt in a rare interview.
“That’s where it all started,” Haven said, referring to a new phase of his relationship with his sister.
“It started with the protection of her and then of her children, my nieces and nephews,” he told the 90who10 podcast in a recent interview.
“You’re a big part of your nieces and nephews lives, I’m sure they’re like your kids in some way,” host Jessica Entner said.
“Those are massively formative years, they’re becoming young adults in their early 20s,” he replied. “That’s so crazy thinking that but yeah, I think it’s just very natural [to feel protective] and I just want to be there. Very much like my mom. I want to be there for them – or for [Angelina] – whatever she’s going though. We have very mutual interests, especially if it’s focuses on how to help kids or stuff like that.”
Haven, 52, is the son of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, and he’s four years older than Jolie, 48.
Haven is also an actor, having appeared in Jolie’s movie “Gia,” the 2001 movie “Monster’s Ball,” starring his sister’s then-husband, Billy Bob Thornton, and a 2004 episode of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” but his last role was the short “Easy Silence” in 2013.
He’s more famous – or infamous – for shockingly sharing a kiss on the lips with Jolie, then 24, while they attended the 2000 Oscars.
Jolie, then a relative newcomer, won an Oscar that night for her role in “Girl, Interrupted,” but she raised eyebrows at the Vanity Fair after-party when she shared an intimate looking smooch with Haven.
“It was a moment that people hadn’t seen at the Oscars — a blatantly sexual moment,” Melissa Rivers, who co-hosted “E! Live From the Red Carpet” that night, told Bustle in 2020.
“Here are these two beautiful people who literally looked completely different than anyone in the sea of glam and beauty. [They were] glam and beauty in a completely dark, very sexual way.”
Haven defended the incident and denied giving his sister a “French kiss. It was something simple and lovely,” he told the Daily Mail in 2007.
“She was about to go off to Mexico to finish filming ‘Original Sin’ with Antonio Banderas. I congratulated her on the Oscar win and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. It was snapped and became a big thing.”
Angelina and Brad’s children are Maddox, 22; Pax, 20; Zahara, 18; Shiloh, 17; and twins Knox and Vivienne, 15.
Jolie was married to Pitt from 2014 to 2019, and their split became bitter, with a long custody battle, allegations that Pitt engaged in “abusive behavior,” and sour grapes over a French vineyard that the former couple shared. Pitt was cleared of child abuse allegations in 2016.
Haven has stayed out of the spotlight in recent years – his most recent picture in public was a photo with his father in October 2022.
He said that whenever he is “blessed” to spend time with Jolie’s kids, he makes sure that he turns his phone off.
‘[It’s] a quality I got from my mom, even though cell phones were not as prevalent as they are now, but back to that idea of her always being like, ‘You are the focus,'” he noted.
