They first got to know each other on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Brad Pitt, who was still married to Jennifer Aniston at the time, was then introduced to Angelina Jolie’s toddler son Maddox.

At the time, sources on the film said that Jolie, now 47, would show up at Pitt’s trailer and tell him: ‘Maddox would like to say “Hi.”‘ Pitt, now 58, was enchanted – by the boy and his mother.

After starting his romance with Jolie in 2004, he formally adopted Maddox in 2006. As we now know, his relationship with both has since sadly ruptured, after the fight on board a private jet in September 2016

After the incident, Maddox then 15, reportedly declined to see his father when a first meeting was brokered between Pitt and his children.

‘He doesn’t really see himself as Pitt’s son,’ a source told US Weekly at the time. Another added more bluntly: ‘He never wants to see Pitt again.’

In the years since, Pitt and Jolie have been entangled in a custody battle, and Maddox has gone his own way. He’s now 21, has graduated from university in South Korea, and is working on films with his mother.

After getting to know each other on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt, who was still married to Jennifer Aniston at the time, was then introduced to Angelina Jolie’s toddler son Maddox, and he soon became enchanted by the boy and his mother

After starting his romance with Jolie in 2004, he formally adopted Maddox in 2006. As we now know, his relationship with both has since sadly ruptured, after the fight on board a private jet in September 2016. The couple is seen in 2007

In the years since, Pitt and Jolie have been entangled in a custody battle, and Maddox has gone his own way. He’s now 21, has graduated from university in South Korea, and is working on films with his mother. He is seen with his parents in 2013

And this week, the ugliness of the schism with his adoptive father has been laid bare. On Thursday, as the result of a freedom of information request, an FBI report into the alleged altercation on the plane which ended the Jolie-Pitt marriage was released.

Per the documents, Pitt is said to have remarked that one child: ‘Looked like a f***ing Columbine kid.’

The legal papers don’t spell out which child this was, although Radar Online reported that sources close to the actor claim that Pitt was referring to Maddox.

Jolie also claims that Pitt said to the children during the heated exchange: ‘Mommy’s not OK. She’s ruining this family. She’s crazy.’

Sources in the Pitt camp describe the release of the information as a ‘media stunt to inflict pain.’ It’s hard to disagree – Pitt was not arrested or charged and no further investigation was undertaken by the FBI; he was never deemed a danger to the children.

The release makes no difference legally in their divorce. What it does do is embarrass Pitt, who is currently finishing a global press tour to promote his new film Bullet Train.

But what is the truth about the Pitt-Jolie family life before the break-up? And what drove Pitt into the drunken rage which has led to a drawn-out divorce battle, and a new era of sobriety for him?

And this week, the ugliness of the schism with his adoptive father has been laid bare. On Thursday, as the result of a freedom of information request, an FBI report into the altercation on the plane which ended the Jolie-Pitt marriage was released. The former couple is pictured in 2015

Per the documents, Pitt is said to have remarked that one child: ‘Looked like a f***ing Columbine kid.’ The legal papers don’t say which child this was, although Radar Online reported that sources claim that Pitt was referring to Maddox (seen in 2014)

Sources in the Pitt camp describe the release of the information as a ‘media stunt to inflict pain.’ It’s hard to disagree – Pitt (pictured last month) was not arrested or charged and no further investigation was undertaken by the FBI

RELATIONSHIP BAGGAGE: PITT’S FAILED MARRIAGE TO JENNIFER ANISTON AND JOLIE’S TROUBLED UPBRINGING

Jolie started her family in 2002. Having filmed Tomb Raider in Cambodia, she decided that she wanted to adopt an orphaned Cambodian baby – even though her second marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton, had recently ended.

She later said: ‘Our marriage was falling apart before I adopted and by the time Maddox came home, Billy and I were apart.’

As the scandal over Pitt’s marriage break-up with Anniston raged, she was spotted playing with Maddox in Central Park, looking the picture of loving motherhood.

An untrue and damaging suggestion started to circulate that Pitt had to leave Aniston because she had not wanted to give up her career and have babies with him. The opposite was true.

In fact, in a 2005 interview with Vanity Fair, Aniston slammed the rumors, saying: ‘I’ve never in my life said I didn’t want to have children. I did and I do and I will!’

Meanwhile Jolie’s own father, John Voight, was not convinced by her reinvention as the ultimate mother. When she adopted Maddox he begged her to seek help for the ‘serious symptoms of real problems’ he thought she showed. Voight added, bluntly: ‘She has never been normal.’

Born on June 4, 1975, she is the daughter of actor Voight and French Canadian actress Marcheline Bertrand. Her parents separated in 1976, and she and her brother, James, were then raised by their mother.

Apparently, she took her parents’ break-up hard, and the relationship with her father has since been difficult. She struggled to get over the fact that he was not faithful to her mother, and she spent years watching him from afar, wishing that they had more of a relationship.

‘My mom was in a lot of pain. My father had an affair, and then there were a lot of challenges with child support and alimony,’ she told the Guardian in 2021.

‘I didn’t feel that close to my father,’ she also shared in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. ‘I felt more of my mother’s daughter when I was a child.’

The actress filed images showing bruising to her hand (left) and elbow (right) to the FBI as part of an investigation into the couple’s ‘verbal and physical fight’ while on board a private jet from France to LAX on September 14, 2016

According to sources, the children ‘always ruled the roost.’ It seems that an ‘anything goes’ principle applied for the family-of-three adopted children – Maddox, Pax, and Zahara – plus twins Knox and Violet, and daughter Shiloh

Pitt would drink heavily and said more than once that he would wake up still drunk from the previous night. His friend Quentin Tarantino alluded to his pot-smoking habit, which Jolie disapproved of. Both are seen in 2022

As a teenager, she was 𝑠e𝑥ually precocious, moving her 16-year-old boyfriend into the family home when she was 14. By her own account, she even tried drugs.

The writer Ian Halperin said in his recent book about Brangelina that she was sent to see the school therapist and claims that a report written about her by the medical professional, and seen by him, said that she is ‘inclined towards anti-social psychopathy’ – a serious and startling claim.

Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy, coupled with a use of charisma, manipulation, 𝑠e𝑥, violence, and intimidation.

She previously self-harmed, once telling an interviewer: ‘I collected knives and always had certain things around.

‘For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.’

By the time she was a mother, her own mother was engaged in a long and devastating battle with breast cancer. She died in 2007, aged 56, after being diagnosed in 1999.

Perhaps she felt that the experience would act as a bulwark against the coming grief; however, Jolie was conflicted about having a baby of her own, and opted to adopt.

‘Having a child of my own would make me feel that there was a child out there who did not have a home because I had chosen to have a baby,’ she told an interviewer in 2005.

Pitt did not feel the same way. After they fell for each other on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, he helped her to adopt Zahara, and then encouraged her to have a child that was biologically theirs, Shiloh. And what she and Pitt have built in these years is perhaps the ultimate dysfunctional household.

THE CRACKS START TO SHOW: JOLIE AND PITT START SLEEPING SEPARATELY – AS ACTOR SEEKS SOLACE IN ALCOHOL

Both of them worked periodically, and the whole family spent years crisscrossing the globe. They settled at one time in New Orleans, and in France, and called a myriad of hotels a temporary home.

Jolie at one time would rent a suite at a Los Angeles hotel, even though she and Pitt had property in Hollywood.

Reports published in a number of US magazines at the time claimed that the actress used to ask for the suite that she had booked for her mother when she was ill, and would go up to her room and spend time alone and weep.

Since the breakup, there has been endless court-appointed therapy for the children, who shuttle between their warring parents in their respective LA homes via chauffeur cars, accompanied by security

When the custody fight started, they were aged between eight and 15. Now only three of them – Shiloh, 16, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 14 – are under 18. The former couple is seen with their kids in 2014

THE TIES THAT BIND… AND BREAK: JOLIE’S BROTHER JAMES MOVES IN AND BECOMES A SECOND ‘DAD’ TO THE KIDS

As the marriage entered its final year, Jolie’s brother James moved in with her and Pitt, having been hired as the chief nanny to their brood.

He was her great support – who can forget their unsettling kiss on the Oscars red carpet in 2000 – and according to a DailyMail.com source, having James around stoked the tensions which ended the marriage.

That insider claimed that relations were so sour between the two men of the house that Pitt used to make James fly economy when the rest of the family were in first class. And some magazines suggested that the younger children had fallen into the habit of calling James ‘Dad’ by the summer of 2016.

Pitt’s current sunny mood seems to be down to the realization that as the children grow older, they can make their own choices about who to spend time with. He’s just bought a family home in Carmel (pictured) where he hopes to do just that

Jolie (seen in 2019), by contrast, sees her future abroad – possibly in Cambodia, where she has property, or in Africa, and she’s complained about being forced to stay in Los Angeles until the kids are 18 because of Pitt. The battle, then, goes on