Angelina Jolie Reveals Son Maddox Is Now A Certified Pilot

Maddox Jolie-Pitt is soaring into the family business — but it’s not what you might expect. The 23-year-old son of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt isn’t pursuing acting; instead, he’s following his mother’s passion for piloting planes.

“I am a pilot,” Angelina shared with Jimmy Fallon during the Dec. 5 episode of. “And my son Maddox is training to be a pilot too. He, actually, is a pilot now.”

The flying bug first bit Angelina back in 2004, thanks to Maddox. “Every time Mad sees a plane, he’s amazed,” she told PEOPLE at the time. Determined to impress her then-3-year-old son, Angelina set out to get her pilot’s license. By the end of that year, she was a certified pilot, and in 2005, she bought her first plane, a Cirrus SR22-G2.

Angelina’s love for flying wasn’t just about adventure — it was a bonding experience. She kept Maddox close, even incorporating his initials “MX” into her plane’s tail number. Angelina trained with an instructor and even with Brad while the couple lived in Canada. A source once described her as a “confident, competent flyer” who lit up in the cockpit.

Fast forward to 2017, and Maddox was already taking the controls himself. “He’s quite capable and always takes me by surprise,” Angelina said at the time. When she learned he was ready to fly solo, she recalled, “He’s been practicing flying, then they called me the other day and said, ‘so Mad can go solo,’ and I nearly dropped the phone!”

While Maddox is taking to the skies, the rest of the Jolie-Pitt clan seems to have their own plans. Angelina revealed to Fallon that her kids — Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne — have different attitudes toward the limelight. “My kids, I think some of them off-camera, behind the scenes, but they really, really want to be,” she said, adding that Shiloh is especially private. 

In her words: “Just private, not photographed, not on the thing. I think, her most of all would like privacy.”

For the actress, privacy for her kids is a priority. “But it wasn’t their choice, So some people are more comfortable with public, some people are more comfortable with talk shows,” she explained. 

As for her own career, Angelina reminisced about an unexpected backup plan: becoming a funeral director. “Doesn’t it make sense, though? My grandfather died and I remembered thinking this is not how they should be. This should be a celebration of life and since I’m not afraid of death and I was comfortable with it, I thought this would be a great career path. I could make this better. I could do a thing here. It’s my fallback career,” she joked.