Angelina Jolie: Staying healthy and aging gracefully is really important to me

Angelina Jolie, who once lived on cigarettes, caffeine, alcohol and junk food, says
staying healthy is very important now that she's a mom. (Photos/Vanity Fair)

Salt beauty Angelina Jolie says staying healthy as she gets older is extremely important now that she's the mother of six children, and especially since she lost her own mom, Marcheline Bertrand, to ovarian cancer in 2007.

“Motherhood has changed my entire life,” Jolie, 35, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I’m more patient and more silly. I wake up with an immediate constant reminder of what’s really important in life."

'I WANNA SEE MY GRANDKIDS'

Angelina adds: “I lost my mother not so long ago and there is something about the years passing where you really appreciate life more each day. And it becomes important for you to stay healthy and age gracefully. I want to see my grandkids. I want to see my children grown and spend the years with Brad.”

But Jolie wasn't always so health and fitness-minded. In her teens and early twenties, Angelina admitted she took drugs, cut herself, drank a lot and was extremely self-destructive, even suicidal.

'I USED TO LIVE ON COFFEE AND CIGARETTES'

But being cast as the athletic action hero Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001 forced Jolie to overhaul her unhealthy lifestyle.

"I used to smoke and drink and eat lots of sugar," Angelina admitted in 2001. "And I'd skip breakfast and instead have a cigarette and coffee. I had to undergo a complete re-adjustment."

As Lara Croft, Jolie famously underwent hours of daily fight-training, martial arts workouts and followed a strict high-protein, no junk-food diet. The healthy changes stuck, after she adopted son Maddox (now 8) from a Cambodian orphanage in 2002.

But Angelina, who did 99% of the stunts in the action-packed spy thriller Salt, hasn't slowed down since becoming a mom.

“I met Brad when we were doing stunts together,” she recalls. “We’re that family that likes a challenge. It’s expected that Mom goes out and jumps onto the top of trucks and beats up four guys at a time. That’s just a day at work.”

Salt, which co-stars Liev Schreiber, earned an impressive $36.5 million in its opening weekend. The spy thriller's solid box-office performance has sparked talk of a sequel down the line.

See more on Angelina Jolie:

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• Salt director Phillip Noyce: 'Angelina Jolie trains so hard for stunt scenes'
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