Angelina Jolie's Name Interrupted

Los Angeles judge grants Angelina Jolie's petition to officially drop Voight from her name

By Josh Grossberg Sep 17, 2002 5:15 PMTags
The bad blood between Angelina Jolie and her dad Jon Voight has gotten so bad that the actress is kissing her surname goodbye.

The Tomb Raider star--born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975--will now simply be known by her Voight-less stage name, Angelina Jolie.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge made the name change official on September 12. Jolie initially made the request on July 3--about a month before her dad took to the airwaves to talk about their troubled relationship and a week before she filed for divorce from Billy Bob Thornton.

Voight, an Oscar winner for Coming Home, left his wife and Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, when Jolie and her brother were still children. Things haven't exactly been all in the family since then.

Although Jolie and Voight temporarily reconciled to shoot Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2000, things deteriorated soon afterward. In August, a choked-up Voight told E! News Live that he hadn't seen his daughter in months. He said he was going on air to beg Jolie, 27, to seek help for "serious emotional problems."

Voight, 63, never stated publicly what those problems might be. Jolie, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted, has in the past admitted to cutting herself with a knife and nearly having a breakdown on the eve of her marriage to Thornton.

In response, Jolie issued a statement saying she and her brother, Jamie, "would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad."

While Jolie did not disclose what problems her father thought ailed her, she did say, "It is not healthy for me to be around my father, especially now that I am responsible for my own child."

The child in question is the 11-month-old Cambodian boy Jolie and Thornton adopted earlier this year.

Since splitting with Thornton two months ago, Jolie has sought full custody of the boy and has refused to let Voight meet him since he came to live in his new home in the States in June.

As part of Jolie's name-switcheroo petition, the judge also granted the actress' request to officially change her son's, from his given Cambodian name of Rath Vibol to Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie.

Reps for Jolie, who's currently filming Tomb Raider 2 (sans Voight), refused to comment on the name change. Voight's camp had no immediate comment, either.