Hotness Interview With Marie Claire

As far as adventures goes: [Angelina Jolie] is a meticulous planner. "Brad makes fun of me because I do that," she says. "I prepare for everything to go completely wrong. As I say to him, "It's because I don't want anything to take me by surprise."

She never meant to fall for Brad: "I wasn't looking at the time," Jolie says. "I was quite happy having lovers and being a single mom, the last thing I was looking for was somebody to have a relationship with."

Shiloh was planned!: "All the girlfriends around me said, 'It's going to take an average of six months"- to get pregnant, that is. "I said, 'Good, I'll schedule that into my life.' And it happened maybe our first try, and there it was!"

Her initial expectations of Brad: "I wouldn't have, from a distance, said, 'That's a man who would be an amazing, dedicated father' or 'That's a man who truly loves helping people or whom I'd love to talk politics with," she says. "But he's a lot more than people would assume he is. He's much more man than any man I've ever met."

On showing so much affection for Brad: "I'm sure the first thing I'm going to say when I get home is, 'God, honey, I had to answer so many questions about you! You need to read this article because it's sounds like I'm just so happy" -her self-mocking singsong fizzes into a giggle- and it's just going to irritate me that you know that."


Zahara's "smart-ass" personality: "The other day, Z said to me, 'I need a cookie.' I said, 'You need a cookie? You don't need a cookie." She said, 'Daddy gonna cry." Why is Daddy going to cry? 'Daddy wants me to have a cookie."

How her father differs from Brad: "That's why I am so in love with Brad as a father," Jolie says. "Because I see that, out of a genuine love for who they individually are, he wants to be very hands-on. And he's a great combination of what I think a father needs to be. He's very strong- he's a caretaker who will teach them right from wrong. He doesn't let them run rampant and just give them candy. But he can [also] get them laughing so hard and have so much fun with them. You can tell, just the way they miss him, that they love Daddy."

How about marriage?: "We're not against it," she says. "It just doesn't seem necessary. He and I have never discussed it in detail, but I would assume- because we [both] went down that road before- it's not that contract or that ceremony that makes you feel solid. We've gone the back way around, and maybe there is something to that- that it's the hard work and the exhaustion and the children that really do make you solid."

Packing on the pounds: [Angelina] admits that she's stressed out and tired, skinnier and less fit than she'd like to be. Soon she'll start work on the action film Wanted, which she hopes will return her to fighting form. "It seemed like a good thing for me- and my family agreed- to have a reason to get strong, get healthy, and do something that was not serious." [..] "I know myself enough to know that sometimes work can help pick me up out of 'times in your life where everything just gets real heavy'."

On losing her mother: "I could have lost her seven years ago when she first got ill, so I have this constant mantra of, 'She's not in pain, she lived seven years longer than we thought, and I was so lucky to have a mom I loved and was so close to." Yet... "She was so young! I see old people, I see people who are grandparents, and there is a part of me that feels it's unfair she didn't get to have that." [..] "In the last few days of her life, I brought Shiloh to the hospital room- and [Shiloh] kept pulling out her oxygen! And she kept saying, 'It's OK, I don't need it that much.' I kept thinking, Oh, that's such a perfect grandmother, you know? You don't need your oxygen."

More tattoos, and humor: "I have to get Pax's coordinates." No telling how many more will follow. As she notes, "I've got lots of room." But... what about Pitt? Why aren't his coordinates there, too? One more laugh. "Brad," she says, "is somewhere else."

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