Hollywood actor Brad Pitt has been warned that his reported estrangement from several of his children could begin to damage his public image despite his successful film career.
The warning followed the 18th birthday of twins Knox and Vivienne, which means all six children Pitt shares with former wife Angelina Jolie are now legal adults.
Pitt and Jolie, who separated in 2016, share Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne.
With the twins reaching adulthood, custody arrangements involving the children are no longer subject to court supervision, ending one of the final legal ties between the former Hollywood couple.
Family attorney Holly Davis described the development as Jolie achieving a “complete cutting of ties between the children and Brad Pitt.”
Davis claimed Jolie had been unable to secure such an outcome during the couple’s divorce and had to wait until their youngest children turned 18.
However, she acknowledged that people outside the family could not know what caused the apparent estrangement.
She said it remained unclear whether the children had been influenced by their mother’s relationship with Pitt or had personal experiences that shaped their decisions.
Davis’s remarks represented her interpretation of the family dispute and not a court finding that Jolie caused the reported breakdown in Pitt’s relationship with his children.
Vivienne’s name-change petition deepens Pitt family rift
The latest scrutiny followed Vivienne’s application to remove “Pitt” legally from her surname.
The 18-year-old filed a petition seeking to change her name from Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt to Vivienne Marcheline Jolie, citing personal reasons.
A court hearing on the application has been scheduled for November 2.
Vivienne had already begun using the shortened name professionally before filing the petition.
She was credited as “Vivienne Jolie” in 2024 while working as a producer’s assistant on the Broadway production of The Outsiders, which Jolie helped produce.
Vivienne is the fourth of the former couple’s children to take legal steps towards removing Pitt from a surname.
Her older sister Shiloh filed to change her name from Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie on her 18th birthday in May 2024. The request was granted in August of that year.
Maddox and Zahara have also applied to remove Pitt from their legal names, with both reportedly citing personal reasons.
Knox and Pax have been reported to use Jolie in some professional settings, although neither has publicly filed a comparable legal petition.
A source close to Pitt previously defended the actor’s attempts to maintain a relationship with his children during the prolonged custody battle.
The source noted that a private judge granted Pitt equal custody in 2021 after hearing testimony from witnesses, therapists and other experts familiar with the family.
That decision was later set aside after a California appeals court disqualified the judge over failures to disclose professional relationships involving Pitt’s lawyers.
Entertainment attorney Tre Lovell argued that the family controversy was unlikely to destroy Pitt’s Hollywood career because his professional reputation was already firmly established.
Lovell said many members of the public would regard the matter as an unfortunate family breakdown rather than evidence that undermined Pitt’s acting career.
Crisis communications expert Kaivan Shroff offered a different assessment.
Shroff said Pitt’s talent remained unquestioned, but warned that multiple adult children choosing to abandon his surname could shift public discussion from his career to his character.
He argued that such a narrative could prove difficult to overcome through positive publicity.
Neither Pitt’s children nor the courts have publicly established a common reason for the surname decisions.
