Actress Angelina Jolie has filed for a divorce from actor Brad Pitt, signalling the end of one of Hollywood's most glamorous and powerful couples.
"This decision was made for the health of the family. She will not be commenting, and asks that the family be given its privacy at this time," attorney Robert Offer said in the statement on Tuesday.
Jolie filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, citing irreconcilable differences as grounds for the split, court documents showed.
She sought full physical custody of their six children, and Pitt asked for visitation rights. Jolie cited their separation date as September 15.
Entertainment website TMZ, citing a legal filing, said Jolie "was extremely upset" by Pitt's parenting methods.
"This decision was made for the health of the family," her attorney said in a statement.
Pitt said he was "very saddened" by the split.
"What matters most now is the well-being of our kids," he said in a statement. "I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time."
The New York Post claims a source told the paper Pitt was caught by a private investigator, hired by Jolie, having an affair with his Inception star Marion Cotillard.
"She hired a private eye because she felt that he was fooling around with her on the set, and it turns out he was, and that was the final straw" the Post quotes the source as saying.
Cotillard and Pitt recently filmed World War II film Allied, and the source said "the atmosphere was full of hard drugs and Russian hookers, and Angie was told Brad got caught up in it".
"He's in the throes of some insane midlife crisis, and Angie is fed up."
A friend of Cotillard's told UK tabloid the Daily Mail she would "devastated" by the claims.
"Marion and Guillaume [Canet, her partner] are blissfully happy, and these kind of claims are not what Marion wants to be hearing."
News of the couple's split was met with a literal earthquake in Los Angeles. It measured 3.2, and hit between the city's downtown and Gardena to the southwest.
Jolie and Pitt, known collectively as "Brangelina", were one of the entertainment world's most visible couples, due to their good looks, successful films and activism.
They married in 2014 after 10 years together.
Jolie, 41, who won a best-supporting actress Oscar for Girl, Interrupted in 2000, was previously married to actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.
Pitt, 52, one of Hollywood's leading men, was married to actress Jennifer Aniston in 2003 when he and Jolie began filming Mr & Mrs Smith, the story of two professional killers who have unknowingly been assigned to kill each other.
There were reports of an affair during that time, but Jolie told Vogue magazine they were only "very, very good friends" until Pitt and Aniston split in 2005.
News of the split sent Aniston's fans into overdrive on social media.
Jolie, the estranged daughter of actor Jon Voight, had a bohemian reputation early in her career but more recently has taken on humanitarian causes and was named a special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
She frequently went to countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Tanzania, Iraq and Jordan to call attention to the plight of refugees and the underprivileged.
Pitt joined Jolie on some of her trips and started a foundation to finance reconstruction of homes in New Orleans after the city was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
Together they started the Jolie-Pitt Foundation in 2006 to help charities worldwide.
Their children include sons adopted from Cambodia and Vietnam and a daughter adopted from Ethiopia.
To encourage other women to explore their options, Jolie spoke out publicly about her elective surgeries in 2013 and 2015 to have her breasts, ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as a preventive measure due to a family history of cancer.
In addition to her Oscar win, Jolie was nominated for an Academy Award for Changeling in 2008.
She also starred in two Lara Croft action films, The Good Shepherd, A Mighty Heart and The Tourist.
Reuters / Newshub.
