Six children, four surname petitions with hearing dates in the diary, and six adults doing six very different jobs

Angelina Jolie’s 6 Children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne

Birth order runs Maddox on 5 August 2001 in Battambang, Pax on 29 November 2003 in Ho Chi Minh City, Zahara on 8 January 2005 in Hawassa, Shiloh on 27 May 2006 in Swakopmund, then Knox and Vivienne together on 12 July 2008 in Nice. Three arrived through adoptions in Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Three were born to Jolie and Pitt. Pitt went on to adopt all three of the first group himself, and that is where the hyphen came from.

The hyphen is the part that has moved. A Los Angeles judge granted Shiloh’s change to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie on 19 August 2024. Maddox, Zahara and Vivienne each filed their own petitions during 2026, with hearings listed for 14 September, 28 September and 2 November. Knox never filed anything; his high-school diploma simply read Knox Jolie in June 2026.

Because every one of the six is now an adult, this guide runs on documents rather than sightings: filed petitions, screen credits, a commencement programme, a released music video. Where the only available material is a photograph or an unnamed source, it is labelled as exactly that, and no career is built on top of it.

Angelina Jolie’s six children at a glance

Two sequences in that table get mixed up constantly. Birth order and arrival order are not the same list. Zahara was born in January 2005 and was living with Jolie by that July. Pax was born fourteen months before her and did not arrive until March 2007. So the second-oldest child is the fourth one home, and any timeline that treats the two orders as interchangeable tilts by two years.

The age column carries a date for a reason. Maddox turned 25 on 5 August 2026, fifteen days before this check. Pax turns 23 on 29 November and Zahara turns 22 on 8 January 2027. Birth dates never move. Ages lifted out of a 2024 profile do, and that single habit is why one search for this family returns four different sets of numbers that all claim to be current.

Who dropped Pitt, when, and what the court actually did

A California name change is paperwork, not a mood. A petition goes into Los Angeles Superior Court, formal notice runs in an approved newspaper for four consecutive weeks so that anyone with an objection can file it in writing, and a judge either signs or refuses at a listed hearing. Four of the six children have been through some or all of that sequence, and every step of it is dated.

Shiloh is the only one already finished. She filed on 27 May 2024, the day she turned 18, paying the court fee herself, and the change to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie was granted on 19 August 2024 after an incomplete background check pushed the first hearing back. Her petition is also the only one that gave a reason beyond the word personal, referring to painful events.

Maddox and Zahara both filed in 2026 and both ran the required notice in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the paper California courts accept for legal advertising. The filing dates split across outlets: some reporting puts Zahara’s petition on 4 June 2026 with notice running on 16 June, 23 June, 30 June and 7 July, while other accounts date both petitions to 28 May 2026 with notice published in the first week of July. Every version agrees on the hearings, which is the part that decides anything: Maddox on 14 September 2026 and Zahara on 28 September 2026.

Vivienne signed hers on 12 July 2026, her 18th birthday, and it reached the court on 21 July with the reason recorded as personal. Knox, her twin, filed nothing at all. His diploma from Fusion Academy in Los Angeles read Knox Jolie when he graduated in June 2026, which settles how a name is printed and leaves the legal question untouched. A surname someone chooses to publish is a different fact from a surname a judge has signed, and the Brennan-Jobs branch of the Steve Jobs family is a long-running example of why the two get confused.

Maddox Jolie: the eldest, and the one with a crew credit

Maddox was born Rath Vibol on 5 August 2001 in Battambang province, and Jolie adopted him from a Cambodian orphanage on 10 March 2002 as a single parent. Four years later, after Brad Pitt moved to adopt both of the children Jolie had brought home on her own, Superior Court Judge Linda Lefkowitz granted the order that made him Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt. CBS News carried the ruling on 19 January 2006.

His working record is a crew record, not an acting one. He was an executive producer on Jolie’s Cambodian film First They Killed My Father, released by Netflix in 2017, and worked as a production assistant on Maria in 2024, where the credits still read Maddox Jolie-Pitt. On Couture, Alice Winocour’s Paris fashion-week drama, he moved up to assistant director, and the credit reads Maddox Jolie.

The film gives that credit a date. Couture premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2025, opened in French cinemas on 18 February 2026 and reached American screens through Vertical on 26 June 2026. The dropped surname on screen was reported in late February 2026, months before his own petition reached the court.

Seoul is the other half of his file, and it needs a date attached. He enrolled at Yonsei University in August 2019 to study biochemistry, with Jolie flying out for the start of term. That establishes a 2019 enrolment. It does not by itself establish a 2026 degree, so the accurate line is a documented enrolment plus a documented film credit seven years later, with a hearing on his name listed for 14 September 2026.

Pax Jolie: a stills camera, a set pass and a festival invitation

Pax was born Pham Quang Sang on 29 November 2003 and spent his first years at the Tam Binh orphanage outside Ho Chi Minh City. Jolie met him there in November 2006 and adopted him in March 2007 as a single applicant, because Vietnamese law at the time did not let unmarried couples adopt together. A Los Angeles decree signed by Judge Gerald Rosenberg, reported on 3 June 2007, made him Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, and Pitt completed his own adoption the following year.

He has the longest set history of the six and the quietest public profile. He voiced a small role in Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016, worked as a still photographer on First They Killed My Father in 2017 and joined the crew of Maria in 2024. Stills photography on a feature is a real job with a real call sheet, which is why it belongs in a family guide and a red-carpet photograph does not.

His January 2026 appearance at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City has been reported as a step towards producing. The verifiable part is that the directors of the short film Self Custody invited him to a private screening and that he was there. The rest rests on people described as close to him. A producing credit on a released project would move that from an account to a record, and none has appeared yet.

Pax also shows work under the name Embtto, which kept his surname out of the room: he submitted a piece to a Tel Aviv group exhibition in 2023 under that alias. Choosing a working name before anyone can attach a famous one is a pattern across this family, and the four Beckham children have handled the same problem in public with very different results.

Zahara Jolie: a Spelman degree and a name read out from the stage

Zahara was born on 8 January 2005 in Hawassa in southern Ethiopia and was adopted by Jolie on 6 July 2005, at six months old, by the same single-parent route Jolie had used in Cambodia three years earlier. The January 2006 California order that renamed Maddox renamed her in the same breath, to Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, and she carried that hyphen for twenty years.

She chose a historically Black women’s college for her degree rather than a film set. Zahara entered Spelman College in Atlanta in 2022, was inducted into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority there, and graduated on 17 May 2026 at the college’s 139th commencement with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a minor in educational studies.

The graduation doubled as the clearest public moment in the whole surname story. The printed programme still listed her as Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt. The name read out as she crossed the stage was Zahara Marley Jolie. Her petition to make that legal was filed weeks later and is listed before a judge on 28 September 2026.

Her one commercial venture predates all of it. The Zahara Collection, a jewellery line designed with the Los Angeles jeweller Robert Procop, was created to raise money for women’s shelters and children’s causes. A psychology degree with an education minor and a fundraising line is a coherent direction, and it is worth saying plainly that no employer, graduate programme or job title has been announced since May.

Shiloh Jolie: the dancer who won the job before anyone knew the surname

Shiloh was born on 27 May 2006 in Swakopmund, Namibia, the first child born to Jolie and Pitt, and the couple sold the first photographs to People and Hello! for a reported combined sum in the millions that went to charity. Eighteen years to the day after that birth, she walked into a Los Angeles court to take her father’s name off her own.

Dance is what she actually does. She trains across Los Angeles studios rather than at one school, and in May 2025 she choreographed an original piece for the launch dinner of the Isabel Marant capsule collection with Net-a-Porter, performed by Tako Suzuki and Keoni Rose. She was billed there under a working name rather than the family one, reported variously as Shi and Shi Joli.

The strongest single fact about any of the six landed in April 2026. Shiloh appears as a dancer in the video for What’s a Girl to Do by the Korean singer Dayoung: teaser on 2 April, full release on 7 April. Her label, Starship Entertainment, said she came through the final round of an open audition and that nobody involved knew whose daughter she was until filming had finished.

That is a casting decision made blind, which is a different kind of evidence from a parent putting a child on a call sheet. It is also the reason the accurate description of Shiloh in August 2026 is working dancer with a released credit, rather than the vaguer star-in-waiting framing that older profiles reach for.

Knox and Vivienne: eighteen since July, and heading opposite ways

The twins were born in Nice on 12 July 2008 and turned 18 five weeks before this check. Vivienne’s middle name, Marcheline, is for Jolie’s mother, the actress Marcheline Bertrand, who died on 27 January 2007. Knox’s first name comes from Pitt’s grandfather, Hal Knox Hillhouse. The first photographs of the two were sold for a reported fourteen million dollars, all of it directed to the family’s foundation.

Vivienne has the credit. She pushed for a stage adaptation of The Outsiders, then worked as a volunteer assistant to her mother, who produced it. The musical opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on 11 April 2024 and won the Tony Award for Best Musical on 16 June 2024, and the Playbill credits her as Vivienne Jolie, the first time the shortened name reached a professional credit.

Knox has no comparable public file, and inventing one would be the easy mistake. What is on the record is a diploma from Fusion Academy in Los Angeles issued in June 2026 in the name Knox Jolie, and no petition filed to match it. Equal standing in a family does not oblige a guide to write equal-length biographies when the underlying evidence is this uneven.

Both twins have grown up almost entirely off camera by comparison with their older siblings, which is a parenting decision rather than an absence of information. Nicole Kidman’s four children across adoption and birth show the same split inside one household, where two siblings became public figures and two did not.

Record or report: what each of the six is verifiably doing

The line that decides everything on a page like this is the one between a document and a sighting. A filed petition, a screen credit, a commencement listing and a released music video are records. A festival invitation, a paparazzi frame and a friend’s remark are dated events. Run the family through that filter and the picture sharpens fast.

Two rows there are doing quiet work. Maddox’s stops short of calling a run of credits a standing job, because the last dated one is a June 2026 release rather than a contract. Pax’s separates an invitation from an appointment, which is the difference between a guide that survives the next twelve months and one that gets corrected in the comments.

What most Angelina Jolie children pages still get wrong

One further habit deserves naming: treating three adoptions from three countries as a single act of charity. Cambodia in 2002, Ethiopia in 2005 and Vietnam in 2007 were three separate legal processes under three legal systems, each with its own paperwork and its own scrutiny, spread across five years and two continents.

Family guides collect the same shortcuts everywhere. The Meryl Streep family guide shows the corrected version for four adults who all chose the same industry, and the KidsCo celebrity family index applies the same dated-evidence rule to every profile in it.

The family timeline and what each date establishes

Two 2026 dates finish the picture and both are still ahead. Maddox stands before a judge on 14 September and Zahara on 28 September, with Vivienne listed for 2 November. By the end of the year the count of children legally named Jolie could be four out of six, and any profile still printing six hyphens will be describing a family that no longer exists on paper.

Questions people ask about Angelina Jolie’s six children

How many children does Angelina Jolie have?

Angelina Jolie has six children with Brad Pitt: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh and the twins Knox and Vivienne. On 20 August 2026 they are 25, 22, 21, 20, 18 and 18, which makes every one of them an adult.

What are the birth dates and ages of Angelina Jolie’s children?

Maddox was born on 5 August 2001, Pax on 29 November 2003, Zahara on 8 January 2005, Shiloh on 27 May 2006 and the twins Knox and Vivienne on 12 July 2008. That makes them 25, 22, 21, 20, 18 and 18 on 20 August 2026.

Which of Angelina Jolie’s children are adopted?

Three of the six. Jolie adopted Maddox from Cambodia on 10 March 2002, Zahara from Ethiopia on 6 July 2005 and Pax from Vietnam in March 2007. Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne were born to Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Why are Angelina Jolie’s children dropping the name Pitt?

Four of the six have filed to become Jolie rather than Jolie-Pitt. Shiloh’s petition, the only one already granted, cited painful events. Maddox, Zahara and Vivienne filed their own petitions in 2026 and each gave the reason on the paperwork as personal.

Did Shiloh Jolie legally change her name?

Yes. Shiloh filed on 27 May 2024, the day she turned 18, and a Los Angeles judge granted the change to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie on 19 August 2024. A delayed background check pushed the original hearing back by several weeks.

What does Zahara Jolie do now?

Zahara graduated from Spelman College on 17 May 2026 with a psychology degree and a minor in educational studies. Her name was read out at the ceremony as Zahara Marley Jolie while the printed programme still carried the hyphenated form.