Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, a daughter of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, decided to drop her father’s last name from her own “following painful events,” her attorney says.
The “Kung Fu Panda 3” voice actor filed a name-change petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court last May on the heels of her 18th birthday. Shiloh, whose full name is currently Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, wants her name instead to be “Shiloh Nouvel Jolie,” according to the petition reviewed by The Times and a name-change notice that ran in the July 8 edition of this newspaper.
On July 8, attorney Peter Levine also filed a legal notice in this newspaper as part of a state legal procedure that helps screen disingenuous name changes. But the notice was mischaracterized by TMZ and other outlets as Shiloh “taking out an ad” to announce the change amid her parents’ contentious, drawn-out divorce and their related legal battles.
“Shiloh Jolie did not take out an ‘ad’ announcing any name change, and any press reporting that is inaccurate,” Levine said Monday in a statement to The Times
“As Shiloh’s attorney, I am required to publish a legal notice because the law in California requires that of anyone who wants to change their name. That legal notice was published in the Los Angeles Times, as is required.”
Levine added that the media “should be more careful in their reporting, especially when covering a young adult who has made an independent and significant decision following painful events, and is merely following legal process.”
He did not elaborate further.
The notice, titled “Order to show cause for a change of name,” said Jolie-Pitt filed a petition with Los Angeles County Superior Court for a decree to change her name, proposing that her new legal name be Shiloh Nouvel Jolie.
The notice also says that if no written objection is filed in a timely manner, the court may grant the petition without a hearing, which is scheduled for July 29. A copy of the order will be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the hearing date.
Shiloh was born on May 27, 2006, in Swakopmund, Namibia. She is the third-eldest of the former Hollywood power couple’s six children and the eldest of their three biological children. They also share kids Maddox, Pax, Zahara and twins Knox and Vivienne.
Shiloh’s younger sister Vivienne also recently dropped Pitt from her last name when it appeared in the Playbill for “The Outsiders.” Zahara has introduced herself without her father’s moniker too.
In September 2016, Jolie filed to divorce her “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” co-star days after they allegedly had a physical altercation on a private plane flight home from Europe. Several of the actors’ children were also allegedly involved in the incident, according to an FBI report.
Details about the 2016 confrontation emerged in a 2022 lawsuit Jolie filed against the federal law enforcement agency.
Additional mention of the alleged incident has emerged during their battle over Chateau Miraval, the former couple’s winemaking estate and family home in the South of France that also served as the site of their 2014 nuptials.
In February 2022, Pitt sued Jolie and her company, Nouvel, for allegedly selling her share of their winery, without his supposedly agreed-upon consent, to “seize profits she had not earned and returns on an investment she did not make.”
Jolie fired back with a cross-complaint in October 2022. Earlier this year, her legal team filed a motion to acquire Pitt’s communications stemming from an “all encompassing” nondisclosure agreement allegedly connected to the sale.
Although the Oscar winners have yet to finalize details of their divorce, they were declared legally unmarried in 2019.
Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.