Angelina Jolie and her brother James Haven made headlines when they
kissed on the red carpet at the Academy Awards, setting tongues buzzing.
The siblings were in attendance at the 2000
event to honor Jolie, who was then 24 years old, for her nomination for her
role as Lisa Rowe in the psychological drama Girl, Interrupted. She was a
relative novice to the film business at the time, but she had already won a
Golden Globe and received an Emmy nod for her depiction of late-model Gia Marie
Carangi in HBO’s Gia.
Indeed, we’re all still perplexed 21 years
later by her oddly intense embrace with her brother at the Vanity Fair after-party.
Jolie won the Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actress that night. She said: “I’m surprised nobody’s ever fainted
up here. I’m in shock, and I’m so in love with my brother right now. He just
held me and said he loved me, and I know he’s so happy for me. And, um, thank
you for that.”
Jolie posed for cameras with her award in
hand and her brother at her side at the Vanity Fair after-party later that evening.
They exchanged a kiss on the lips at one point, a split-second action that hit
the front pages of numerous newspapers the next morning and the covers of
magazines the following days.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in
2000, Jolie stated that she felt only ‘brotherly love’ for Haven. She further
said: “My parents really loved that moment, and that’s what will always
matter.”
In 2007, James told the Daily Mail: “I did
not give Angie a French kiss. It was something simple and lovely. She was about
to go off to Mexico to finish filming Original Sin with Antonio Banderas. I
congratulated her on the Oscar win and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. It
was snapped and became a big thing. It was an amazing moment. Yet it was
totally misconstrued.”
What People Say:
Author Rosey Levander
They kissed each other on the lips a few
times. Yes, it was more passionate than how most people kiss their siblings,
but I didn’t see it as “making out”. Would I kiss my brother like that? Fuck
no! I guess they didn’t think of it as weird. They were just being
affectionate, as far as they were concerned. Her brother was her world at that
time. They were just really close.
Frances De La Rue
Because they
have a strange and unusual relationship. And because she got publicity out of
it. Everyone was talking about her or them.
Ron Richards
The sandal sheets at the time intimated there
might be something incestuous about the two. But there isn’t according to those
who are close to the family. Angelina is very close to her brother. Not
sexually close. But they have shared a lot of family suffering together. The
day she kissed him on the lips was the same day that they both had been with
their mother who was suffering from cancer. They both loved their mother. And
the emotion between all three was at a pitch. Thus when they came away from
their mother and were together, they sort of reaffirmed their brotherly and
sisterly love for each other. NOTHING MORE.
By the way, just so you know, I’m not a fan
of Angelina Jolie. I think she has done a lot of really crazy things in her
life and is, to some extent, still doing them with the way she raises her kids.
But I doubt there is any scandal about the way she is with her brother.
