A hitman asked Angelina Jolie one question that ultimately saved her life after she tried to hire him to kill her.
At just 22 years old, the Oscar-winning star was facing severe mental health issues that led her to contemplate ending her life.
In a candid interview with IMDb in 2001, she recalled: “This is going to sound insane but there was a time I was going to hire somebody to kill me," The Mirror reported.
The Maleficent actress had reached a breaking point, and her struggles led her to seek out an assassin in New York City.
In a follow-up interview with The Face in 2003, Jolie revealed how easy it was to find a hitman in the city. “They’re not that hard to find in New York,” she said. “As insane as it sounds, I think a lot of people consider suicide when they’re young.”
Jolie, however, had a unique perspective on her potential death. She explained: “I was very aware that so many people around me, like my mother, would feel as though they didn’t give enough or do enough if I’d taken my own life."
Her solution was to have someone else take her life in a way that would seem like a robbery. “Then it would be murder and it wouldn’t be that anyone would feel they’d let me down.”
A Life-Saving Moment Question From The Hitman
When the Gia star found the hitman, what happened next was far from what she expected. Rather than going through with the job, the hitman asked her a simple question that would ultimately save her life.
“He was a decent enough person and asked if I could think about it and call him again in two months,” Jolie recalled. “Something changed in my life and I figured I’d stick it out.”
This unexpected intervention gave her the time she needed to reconsider her decision and, ultimately, find the strength to keep going.
Reflecting on a Darker Time
Years later, Jolie, who is now 50 years old, reflected on this difficult period during an interview with 60 Minutes.
“I went through heavier, darker times and I survived them,” she shared, cited by Daily Mail. “I didn’t die young, so I’m very lucky. There are other artists and people who didn’t survive certain things. I think people can imagine that I did the most dangerous and I did the worst.”
She acknowledged how close she came to death during this time, recalling: “For many reasons, I shouldn’t be here. You think of those too many times where you came close to too many dangerous things, too many chances taken too far.”
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Motherhood as a Turning Point
The turning point in Jolie's life came when she became a mother. After adopting her first child, Maddox, in 2001, and later adopting Zahara and Pax, her perspective on life began to change.
“Having children saved me - and taught me to be in this world differently,” she told Vogue. "I think, recently, I would’ve gone under in a much darker way had I not wanted to live for them."
“They’re better than me because you want your children to be,” she continued. "Of course, I’m the mother, and hopefully that safe place for them and that stability. But I’m also the one that they laugh at - and I see them taking over so many different aspects of our family."
The Eternals actress' love for her children is something she treasures deeply, comparing it to the passion Maria Callas had for singing. “It’s my happiness,” she said during an interview with Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan. “You can take everything else away from me. Nothing else matters.”
While her kids, particularly her two eldest sons, Maddox and Pax, helped her with her role in Maria, they do not share her desire to be in the public eye.
“None of my children want to be in front of the camera at this time,” she explained. “They’re quite private. Shiloh’s extremely private. They weren’t born with privacy, right? So I hope they can have that as they grow.”