Update 2: TMZ reports that the Los Angeles Police Department referred a child abuse investigation into Brad Pitt to the FBI, because the alleged abuse occurred onboard a private jet in international airspace between France and the United States.
The outlet further reports that the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has already interviews both Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and is also planning to interview their children.
Original story below:
Update: The Los Angeles Police Department tells the Hollywood Reporter that it is not actively pursuing a criminal child abuse investigation against Brad Pitt.
“We are not investigating any case, nor do we have any allegations against Mr. Pitt,” police said in a statement.
Original story below:
Brad Pitt is reportedly under investigation by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services over an incident last week in which he was allegedly verbally and physically abusive toward his children, according to a report by TMZ.
TMZ reports that Pitt and his soon-to-be ex-wife Angelina Jolie were on a private jet with at least some of their six children when Pitt became intoxicated during the flight.
The gossip outlet reports that the 52-year-old actor allegedly “went wild, screaming and getting physical with the kids.”
When the flight landed, Pitt is alleged to have attempted to leave the airport in a fuel truck.
Sources close to the couple told TMZ that the airplane incident was the reason Jolie separated from Pitt and filed for divorce the following week.
Pitt and Jolie have six children: Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and twins Knox and Vivenne, 8.
The couple met in 2003 on the set of the romantic thriller Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and had been one of Hollywood’s most famous power couples, with the tabloid media dubbing them “Brangelina.” They were married in 2014. Last year, the couple starred in the Jolie-directed drama By the Sea, about a married couple attempting to repair their broken relationship.
In the initial reports of their divorce, Jolie was said to have been “fed up” with the way Pitt was parenting their children, and that the children were in danger around the actor. The New York Post‘s Page Six also reported that Jolie had hired a private detective to look into allegations that Pitt had been cheating with French actress Marion Cotillard on the set of their upcoming film Allied, though multiple sources, including Cotillard, have denied the affair.
Jolie has hired top Hollywood divorce attorney Laura Wasser, who represented Amber Heard in her divorce proceedings against Johnny Depp earlier this summer.
This article has been updated with additional information from the LAPD.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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