• Society

Angelina Jolie Considers Settling in Cambodia

• By Ung Chamroeun
• December 12, 2023 2:05 PM

PHNOM PENH – Angelina Jolie plans to leave Hollywood for Cambodia, a country that, she claimed, changed the course of her life. However, the plan is still in the early stages as the celebrity is seeking change years after divorcing Brad Pitt.

“After my divorce, I lost the ability to live and travel as freely. I will move when I can. Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So, you seek authenticity,” Jolie said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Dec.5. 

Despite being a global star, the actress said she's not interested in the glitters of the film industry, probably because she has been accustomed to life around Hollywood since childhood.

Even though her divorce from global star Brad Pitt dates back seven years, it caused chaos in Angelina’s life. The actress said she then decided to spend more time at home with her children, taking a different approach to life, out of the spotlight.

While there are no details on when, and even if, she might move to Cambodia, the country has played an important role in the celebrity’s life.

Jolie first came to Cambodia in 2000 to play the main character in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” The movie was a global success and is considered the first international film that brought Angkor Wat temple to a Western audience on big screens. She then adopted a young Cambodian, named Maddox, in 2002.

“It’s strange, I never wanted to have a baby. I never wanted to be pregnant. I never babysat. I never thought of myself as a mother. It was suddenly very clear to me that my son was in the country, somewhere” she told Associated Press in 2016.

Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt bonded her adoptive mother with Cambodia. In 2006, she founded the Maddox Jolie-Pitt (MJP) Foundation in Battambang’s Samlout district, which focuses on the environment and wildlife protection, health and economic stability in the community. A year prior, she was granted Cambodian citizenship by King Norodom Sihamoni.

Jolie, through her humanitarian mission and as a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has learned the struggles of humanity, especially those living on land filled with war-left landmines.

The organization cleared landmines from the 1970s and 80s conflict, boosting Angelina's popularity in a country with 5 million undiscovered landmines.

In 2017, she came to Cambodia again to produce the movie, “First They Killed My Father,” based on the true story of Loung Ung who navigated life in the Khmer Rouge Regime after her father, who was a government official, was killed.

In 2022, Jolie launched the Women For Bee Project in Samlout district, in a move to help the locals earn extra income from raising bees in addition to what they get from growing their usual crops. This project will build 2,500 beehives for 125 million bees by 2025.

Still in this district, Jolie built a house in 2003 to turn the area from illegal wildlife hunting to a wildlife protection area.

“When I first came to Cambodia, it changed me. It changed my perspective. I realized there was so much about history that I had not been taught in school, and so much about life that I needed to understand, and I was very humbled by it,” Jolie told the Associated Press in 2016.

 

Teng Yalirozy contributed to the story.