Angelina Jolie says she would rather have her children “out there trying and failing” – or in the case of her 23-year-old son Maddox, flying a plane – than not taking “risks” at all.
Talking to W Magazine for one of 16 unique covers in the “Volume 1, Best Performances” issue, the 49-year-old Oscar winner detailed her thoughts on her eldest son’s passion for flying.
When asked if she was “nervous” about Maddox flying the plane, she said, “No.”
“Maybe I just have a big family,” Jolie joked. “I’m more concerned that people don’t find themselves and something they love. I think it’s more dangerous, to walk so uncertainly through life that you don’t take risks. You don’t wake up with passion. I think it’s more scary.”
“I’d rather they were out there trying and failing than not pushing themselves and being passionate,” she added.
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Angelina Jolie entered W MagazineFirst Edition for 2025, Volume 1, Best Performances.
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Jolie — who shares Maddox, Pax, 21, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, Knox, 16, and Vivienne, 16, with ex Brad Pitt — previously talked about Maddox’s time in heaven while appearing on the Dec. 5 episode The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallonwhen she confirmed that her son had followed in her footsteps and become a trained pilot.
As for Jolie’s connection to flying, she was inspired to get into the cockpit by her son in 2004, eventually becoming a pilot herself.
“Every time Mad sees a plane, he’s amazed,” Jolie told PEOPLE at the time. “If I could fly a plane until he was 4, I’d be like Superman to him.”
After getting her license in December 2004, the actress bought a Cirrus SR22-G2 single-engine plane in early 2025 with the letters “MX” in the tail number in honor of her son. She then shared with PEOPLE in 2017 that Maddox started flying, too.
“He’s quite capable and always surprises me,” Jolie said at the time. “He was practicing flying, and then the other day they called me and said, ‘that Mad can go solo’, and I almost dropped the receiver!”
Elsewhere during her latest appearance on FallonJolie spoke about her children’s attitudes towards a day’s work in the entertainment industry, saying some of them – especially daughter Shiloh – “want to be private”.
“Only in private, not photographed, not on things. I think she would want privacy more than anything,” Jolie said.
“But it wasn’t their choice,” he said Evil the star added about the fame of her children. “So some people are more comfortable with the public, some people are more comfortable with talk shows.”
Angelina Jolie shares the moment she watched her daughter soak Wicked‘Defying Gravity’ for the first time: ‘She needs this’
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Angelina Jolie and son Maddox at the White House on April 26, 2023.
STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty
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While speaking to the BBC in December 2024 about her new film, MariaJolie talked about Pax and Maddox working on the project as production assistants and said they saw their mom express pain in a “new way.”
“They saw me go through all kinds of things, but they didn’t experience that I expressed a lot of pain that usually a parent hides from a child,” said Jolie, adding that they were with her in emotional moments.
“They were there to witness some of it,” she said, “but then we would hug or bring me cups of tea.”
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Source: HIS Education