Nearly a decade after Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, the former Hollywood power couple has discovered something that may be harder than ending a marriage: escaping the history they created together.
The latest reminder came after Pitt revealed that he is drinking alcohol again following seven years of sobriety, reopening one of the most sensitive chapters of their relationship.
According to an unnamed insider cited by Rob Shuter‘s Naughty But Nice and subsequently reported by International Business Times UK, Jolie was “not surprised” by the revelation.
The source claimed the actress had “tried to warn people” that Pitt returning to alcohol was always a possibility. Jolie herself has not publicly commented on Pitt’s disclosure, making that distinction important.
But even without a direct statement from Jolie, Pitt’s admission was almost guaranteed to pull his ex-wife back into the conversation.
Alcohol was not simply part of Pitt’s life after Hollywood parties and premieres. It became deeply connected to the collapse of his marriage, his attempt to rebuild himself after the divorce and, ultimately, his increasingly fractured relationship with the six children he shares with Jolie.
That is why, despite separating in 2016 and finalizing their divorce in December 2024, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie continue to circle around each other.
Every new revelation about one of them seems to lead straight back to the other.
Brad Pitt Admits He Is No Longer Sober After Seven Years
Pitt made the surprising disclosure during a wide-ranging interview with Esquire, revealing that the strict sobriety he had maintained for years had ended.
“I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” Pitt said. However, the Oscar winner has not described himself as returning to his old drinking habits. He said he now consumes alcohol in a much more controlled way and has learned through experience that there are limits he cannot safely push.
That distinction matters. Pitt is not publicly saying that his life has gotten out of control. His position is that he can now drink occasionally while maintaining boundaries.
Still, the admission represents a dramatic change from the story Pitt spent years telling about himself. After his marriage collapsed, sobriety became one of the strongest symbols of his personal reinvention.
Pitt told The New York Times in 2019 that he had gone as far as he could with drinking and consequently gave up what he called his “drinking privileges.” He spent approximately 18 months attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and later credited actor Bradley Cooper with helping him become sober.
As recently as 2025, Pitt spoke emotionally on Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast about how desperate he had been for change.
He described reaching an extremely difficult point in his life and said he needed to essentially reboot himself. That makes his decision to drink again more than a lifestyle footnote.
Sobriety had become part of Brad Pitt’s post-Angelina Jolie identity. Giving it up inevitably forces people to reconsider the events that made him seek sobriety in the first place.
Alcohol Became Part of the Story Behind Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Divorce
The shadow hanging over Pitt’s latest revelation is the September 2016 private-plane incident that preceded Jolie’s divorce filing.
Jolie later alleged in court documents that Pitt had been drinking during a confrontation aboard the family’s private flight from Europe to California.
She accused Pitt of physically and verbally confronting her and some of their children. Pitt denied allegations of abuse. Investigations followed, but no criminal charges were brought against him, and Entertainment Weekly notes that investigators did not make a finding of abuse.
Days after the flight, Jolie filed for divorce. Pitt subsequently stopped drinking. That sequence has made it nearly impossible to separate the subject of alcohol from the end of Brangelina.
For Jolie, according to her legal filings over the years, the breakup was about the security and welfare of the family. For Pitt, sobriety became an element of a broader public story about confronting his failures, changing his behavior and rebuilding his life.
Those two narratives have existed beside each other ever since. Now Pitt’s decision to drink again brings them crashing together again.
Hollywood Experts Say Brad Pitt’s Silence Helped Him Control the Story
There is another reason Pitt’s latest interview matters. For much of the decade following the breakup, the actor has resisted publicly litigating his relationship with Jolie in interviews.
Hollywood PR experts have previously argued that strategy helped him. Mark Borkowski, founder of Borkowski PR, said Pitt’s enduring movie-star image gave him an unusual level of protection from scandal, joking: “When you’re that genetically gifted, the scandal has to work twice as hard to stick.”
PR executive Evan Nierman, founder of Red Banyan, pointed to something even more important: Pitt generally avoided feeding the controversy.
“That silence gave him control,” Nierman said. Pitt’s new interview changes that equation.
Once he talks openly about sobriety, drinking and what he cryptically called “family stuff,” the walls between Brad Pitt the movie star and Brad Pitt the former husband and father start coming down.
Jolie automatically becomes relevant again because she and the children were present during the period Pitt himself has described as the turning point in his life.
The pair may rarely speak publicly about each other, but their stories remain structurally connected.
Brad Pitt’s Estrangement From His Children Makes the Admission More Complicated
The most painful evidence of that connection may no longer be the divorce at all. It is the children.
Recent reporting has described Pitt as estranged from the six children he shares with Jolie. All six are now adults, and each has either legally removed or stopped publicly using “Pitt” as a surname, although some of those changes have been informal rather than completed through the courts.
Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne were once central to the public image of Brangelina as an unconventional but extremely close global family.
Today, that picture looks dramatically different.
Shiloh formally changed her surname to Jolie after turning 18. Maddox has also moved toward formally using Jolie. Zahara has publicly identified herself as Zahara Marley Jolie, while Vivienne and Knox have similarly appeared publicly without Pitt’s surname. Reports have described Pax as estranged from his father as well.
EL PAÍS reported in July that the younger children have had little relationship with Pitt for years and described the wider family as overwhelmingly aligned with Jolie.
Pitt himself appears aware of how profoundly the family breakdown has affected him. In his latest interview, when pressed about an especially dark period in his mental health, he declined to provide extensive details and simply attributed it to “family stuff.”
That phrase may be vague, but its significance is difficult to miss. Pitt can rebuild his career. He can enter another relationship. He can change his habits. He can even reconsider what sobriety means to him.
Repairing relationships with adult children is a very different challenge.
Château Miraval Keeps Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Legally Connected
Then there is Château Miraval, perhaps the perfect symbol of why Pitt and Jolie cannot fully disappear from each other’s lives. The French estate was once one of the great symbols of their romance. They married there in 2014.
Today, it is the center of an ongoing legal battle.
Pitt has challenged Jolie’s sale of her interest in the winery to Tenute del Mondo, arguing that the transaction violated an agreement between them. Jolie disputes that such an agreement prevented her sale and has accused Pitt in legal filings of waging a “vindictive war” against her.
Their divorce may be finished, but Miraval is not. Recent court maneuvering has continued in 2026, including disputes over private communications, business records and financial information.
The irony is difficult to overlook. A wine estate that once represented their marriage now helps keep two people who have spent years trying to separate their lives connected through litigation.
Why Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Continue Circling Around Each Other
Hollywood has seen plenty of ugly celebrity divorces. Few have produced an afterlife like this one.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were together for roughly 12 years, built a family of six children, became two of the most photographed people on earth, bought businesses together and converted their relationship into a cultural brand so enormous that the public reduced them to one word: Brangelina.
Ending that kind of partnership was never going to be as simple as signing divorce papers. Their lives remain connected by three things that cannot easily be erased: their children, Château Miraval and the competing accounts of how their marriage ended.
Alcohol sits directly at the intersection of all three. It was associated with the incident that preceded Jolie’s divorce filing. Pitt’s decision to quit drinking became part of his response to the collapse of the marriage. And now his decision to drink again has reopened questions about whether the changes he made after losing his family were permanent.
That does not mean Pitt’s return to moderate drinking proves Jolie’s allegations, nor does it establish that he has returned to the behavior of 2016.
It does mean that the past is still powerful enough to shape how almost every major personal revelation from either star is interpreted.
Even their public strategies reveal the divide. Pitt has largely tried to move forward through work, selective interviews and his relationship with Ines de Ramon.
Jolie has concentrated intensely on her children, humanitarian interests, acting and directing while repeatedly describing family as the center of her life.
Yet neither can completely write the other out of the story. The marriage and the divorce ended, but the connection did not.
And Brad Pitt’s decision to pick up a glass of wine again has shown just how quickly one small detail from the present can send Hollywood all the way back to the moment Brangelina fell apart.
