Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their brood made a surprise visit to an amusement park in the Charente-Limousin region in France last week. "We're a small little town, we're not used to having celebrities," an employee of the park told a local paper. "We don't get French celebrities, so it's completely crazy to find yourself standing with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, the most chased-after couple in the world in front of you. Completely crazy." Last Monday, while the park's six employees were having lunch, a blacked-out Mercedes van pulled up carrying the Jolie-Pitt clan. "I asked myself, 'Who is this man with a ball cap and this woman with black sunglasses?'" said another staffer. "We were all extremely shocked. Employees offered to waive the entry fee, but Pitt and Jolie insisted on paying and stayed about an hour. "To see Brad Pitt knocking around in a bouncy castle with his children [and] screaming like wild animals was like a hallucination," said the park's operator.
Angelina Jolie showed her humanitarian side to the paparazzi earlier this week when she offered a cycling photographer a ride when his bike got a flat tire. "She was one of the nicest people I have ever met," said the Splash News paparazzo. "And it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life... When I realized I'd got a puncture I thought I was going to lose her and not get any pictures. The next thing I know, Angelina's car is pulling over. Angelina winds her window down and says, 'Lance, why don't you jump in the car?'" Jolie told the photog that she and her family were so impressed with his cycling, they nicknamed him Lance after Lance Armstrong. "She said, 'We love having you riding alongside us. You're always happy, always smiling. The kids enjoy watching you whizzing along on your bike.'... I got in and said, 'This is so strange!' She just laughed and said, 'Well, it's a strange world we live in.'" Jolie asked him questions about himself and where he was from, and wondered whether her or Brad Pitt was a hotter commodity in the paparazzi world. "She said, 'Brad and I always wonder which one of us is the priority.' She said, 'We just don't understand why people always want to take our picture. We never go out drinking or anything like that.'"
Angelina Jolie is still gushing over her relationship with Ocean's 13 star Brad Pitt. While promoting A Mighty Heart, the actress and activist told a British paper, "I am a very lucky woman. I have a beautiful family and Brad is a supportive friend and a great father. And he is very romantic. We talk very deeply about how we feel. We're very similar. We support each other and back each other as parents. There is no divide... When my mother died Brad held her hand and helped me through all the stages of dealing with someone dying. After the funeral Brad brought everyone back to the house and asked questions about our mom. He focused on all the love and all the joy we were fortunate enough to have had. He is an extraordinary man."
Angelina Jolie would rather been known as an activist than an actress - which is good, since she's much better at the former. "I have no animosity toward Hollywood or the demands of the red carpet, all that silliness," Jolie tells Esquire mag. "That's my job, and I'm happy to have it. But when I die, do I want to be remembered as an actress? No. I recently did an op-ed column published in a newspaper. And at the end, it didn't say I was an actress. It said that I was a UN goodwill ambassador - that's all. And I was really proud... I entered this business before I had focus and purpose in my life. I was very unhappy, very unhealthy, and when I sat down for an interview, I didn't know why. I felt like I didn't have anything to share. It was a very empty time." Of her home life with partner Brad Pitt and their four children, Jolie says, "We don't go to parties. We hardly ever leave the house. We try to schedule some time when we're alone... Some people have their lives together and then they have their children. Brad and I are starting with the children and are planning to have our time together in our later years."
Angelina Jolie and son Maddox landed in Vietnam earlier today to complete the process of adopting a three-and-a-half-year-old boy. Jolie is scheduled to appear at an adoption ceremony with Vietnamese officials tomorrow morning, though some sources suggest the UN rep may be able to pick up her new son as early as tonight. Once the child is in her custody, Jolie's application must be reviewed by the U.S. consulate before a passport can be issued for the boy. The head of Vietnam's offical international adoption bureau admits Jolie's application was fast-tracked because "a celebrated person is certainly treated a little bit different from others." The Tomb Raider actress filed papers as a single parent because she and Brad Pitt are not married.
Angelina Jolie can expect to welcome a three-and-a-half-year-old Vietnamese orphan into her home sometime in the next few weeks. Adoption officials in Ho Chi Minh City are reportedly reviewing Jolie's application quickly and expect to have her adoption processed by the end of the month. The director of the Tam Binh orphanage says the little boy Jolie has applied to adopt was abandoned at a hospital as an infant and has lived at the orphanage ever since. "He is in good health," said the director. "He is a little bit shy." Jolie recently spoke to Newsweek about her humanitarian work and said of her new home of New Orleans, "Brad was doing a film here and so we were going to spend a month here. [We] realized it was a place we liked, we liked the people, I liked the school for the kids. They're very diverse. I liked the other parents. I feel very comfortable with them. We're happy having our children here. Brad is working on rebuilding here... But for me, just as a mom, I love the other parents and the kids and the schools. I'm starting to work on the education ehre and the school system here. There's a lot of work to be done."
Angelina Jolie told a British paper that she avoided an attempted abduction in a foreign country she won't name. "It was in a small village. I won't say where, or with whom, but some gangsters planned to kidnap me and extort a massive ransom," the UN ambassador said. "I was warned at the last minute, and managed to escape, luckily." Jolie said of her humanitarian work, "I don't want to act like the Mother Teresa of Hollywood. But I want to help where there is poverty and destruction. I love Brad very much and our trips we pull together as a team. Things only get difficult when it affects our children." The Tomb Raider actress credits her role as a mom with rounding her out as a person. "It made me feel like complete woman," she says. "At times in my life I was lost, without a purpose, now I'm more grounded."
