Angelina Jolie Discusses Juggling Priorities as a Mom and Avoiding Living an 'Empty Life'

Angelina Jolie and daughters Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and Zahara Jolie-Pitt
David Livingston/Getty images

The 42-year-old actress and humanitarian has been trying to balance motherhood with her growing role as a director and producer.

It's amazing that Angelina Jolie has much time for anything between acting, filmmaking and raising six children.

The 45-year-old talent Oscar-winning actress-turned director and producer recently told Deadline Hollywood that, like other mothers, she seeks to find meaning and balance in juggling priorities in her life.

"You have your creative, and you have your work, and every day of your life is going to be about somehow growing as a person," she told the website. "Somehow feeling you can contribute to the extent that you can get tribute."

"We’re all trying to find balance, as people," she continued. "I think to be a balanced person, you have to find those things that you just purely enjoy. But, of course, if you aren’t participating in the bigger picture of life, and in being somehow useful, and you aren’t doing something and growing, then really, you’ll find you’re not very happy. Really, you’ll have quite an empty life."

Jolie has certainly contributed. She has won as many awards for her humanitarian work as she has for her work in film and she remains a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and Special Envoy. She even opened a wildlife sanctuary in Namibia with daughter Shiloh.

And she has used her status as a filmmaker to raise awareness on a host of issues around the world -- particularly the suffering of children.

Her latest film project, the biopic First They Killed My Father, tells the tale of a seven-year-old girl forced to be a child soldier while her siblings are sent to labor camps during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Jolie directed and co-wrote the film. She also produced The Breadwinner, the animated story of an Afghani girl forced to dress like a boy to support her family in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

See what advice Jolie has for her daughters on womanhood in the video below.

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