At a press conference for her film Changeling, Jolie fought back tears when she began to talk about her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died of cancer in January 2007.
For the film, the star took inspiration from her mother to play Christine Collins, a woman whose son was abducted in 1928.
The 33-year-old actress said of her mother, "We called her Marshmallow as a joke because she was just the softest, most gentle woman in the world. She would never get angry. She couldn’t swear to save her life but for her kids she was really fierce. So this was very much her story in that she was the woman I related to. She had that strength for her children."