Angelina Jolie understands how her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, "must have felt" when left for Jon Voight's "other woman."
On Feb. 5, the Maria actress was accepting the Maltin Modern Master Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival when she opened up about her late mother, who died in 2007 at 56 years old after a battle with ovarian and breast cancer.
"I am trying to think of how much I'm going to share right now," Jolie, 49, began, per People. The Academy Award winner then recalled seeing Voight attend the 1979 Oscars, where he won Best Actor for Coming Home. The ceremony was three years after his separation from Bertrand, with their divorce being finalized in 1980.
But although Voight was still legally married, his vows didn't stop him from attending the Oscars with actress Stacey Pickren.
"My mom was home with two little kids," Jolie, who has an older brother, James Haven, 51, explained. "My mom's dream was to be an actor. I believe my mother's mother's dream was to be an actor, which is probably why she took her to the theater in Chicago all the time."
Jolie continued, "She was in her twenties because she had me when she was very young. She was divorced from a very famous man and she was home with her babies in an apartment watching him win an Oscar with the other woman."
But while the moment was surely traumatic for Bertrand and her children, Jolie called it "a part of our family history." "I remember thinking that [Bertrand] was there for me and my brother and that was the choice she made. And how she must have felt on that night always really stuck with me," she continued.
When Jolie won Best Supporting Actress in 2000 for Girl, Interrupted, the actress gifted the golden statue to her mother. "To have that moment, to get off that stage and call her and say, ‘It's yours' — and I gave it to her — one of the best moments of my life."
In the years since her mother's death, Jolie and Voight have largely been estranged, and last August, the actor commented on his daughter's divorce from Brad Pitt, which was finalized in December.
"I wish they'd find a way to make peace," Voight, 85, told Fox News. "I think the kids need some stability. I love the kids, and I love my daughter. And I want Brad to step up to do, you know, what he has to do. End this nonsense."
