Angelina Jolie: How She’s Coping With Son Maddox, 18, Leaving Home To Attend College In South Korea

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Maddox Jolie-Pitt is headed to college! Angelina Jolie’s oldest will reportedly attend school in South Korea and we’ve EXCLUSIVELY learned how she’s ‘grappling’ with the fact that her baby boy is all grown up.

“This summer is bittersweet for Angelina [Jolie, 44] and the kids because Maddox [Pitt-Jolie, 18] will be off to college in the fall,” a source close to the Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil star tells HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. Maddox will reportedly study biochemistry at South Korea’s Yonsei University, according to PEOPLE. His mom, our source tells us, is “having a lot of feelings over him going away to school. She’s extremely proud, but she’s also sentimental about her baby growing up and leaving home.”

“It’s an end of an era,” the insider tells HollywoodLife. “He’s been so bonded with her for so many years. Now, he’s heading out on his own journey.” While that journey will reportedly take him thousands of miles away, the insider says that Angie will “still see him often.” However, the insider says Maddox leaving home is “still a very significant change that Angie’s grappling with. The other kids are going to miss Maddox terribly too because he’s their hero. So they are all just trying to enjoy their time together as much as possible.”

Despite getting “accepted into other universities,” PEOPLE reports that Maddox chose Yonsei. He’s been studying how to speak Korean and taken lessons “multiple times a week” to prepare. Maddox’s decision to study in South Korea doesn’t come entirely out of left field. He and Angie were spotted on a college tour in South Korea in Nov. 2018. Angie was overseas on an official visit as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee Special Envoy. In between official UN business, she and Maddox clearly did some first-hand research into colleges, and apparently, he found that Yonsei University was the school for him.

“Maddox always knew that he wanted to study in Asia, so that was never a question, and it’s one of the reasons Angelina is so in awe of him. He already knows his own mind and exactly what he wants,” a source told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY at the time. Angie will reportedly drop him off in August and that while the University is far away from his American home, the school is close to the family’s Cambodian home. So, expect Angie to pop by Cambodia to in between filming her scenes in the upcoming Marvel blockbuster, The Eternals.