Inside Angelina Jolie’s tough life where dad Jon Voight partied with Muhammad Ali leaving boxer’s wife changing diapers
ANGELINA Jolie’s painful childhood has been revealed as Muhammad Ali’s ex-wife claims she helped changed her diapers while her dad Jon Voight and the boxing legend partied with other women.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Khalilah Ali said fame changed her late ex-husband and he’d regularly hit on girls with Oscar winner Jon.
Khalilah claimed she would be left holding his then baby daughter Angelina, alongside the star’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died from cancer in 2007.
Khalilah admitted she has a personal issue with Jon, now 82, as she felt disrespected by her husband’s philandering.
She told The Sun: “I used to change Angelina Jolie’s diapers because Angelina’s mother Marcheline was one of my best friends. I have not seen Angelina since she’s grown though.
“I’m dying to go meet her so we can talk. Her mother told her a lot about me before she passed away.
“Him [Jon] and Ali used to run together. I was with Marcheline and Angelina at our house when they would go out together.”
‘WASN’T A VERY NICE THING’
Khalilah continued: “I never really hung out with Jon Voight that much, Ali would kind of say, ‘Let’s go!’ and they would take off. But I would stay with the wife and the kids.
“I really don’t have that much to say about Jon Voight because of a personal reason. Ali was checking out girls and Jon Voight was checking out girls, and it wasn’t a very nice thing for me to see.
“Men will be men. So, that’s kind of why I stayed away from Jon because they would do things like that together and that wasn’t really nice.”
Angelina has a fraught relationship with Jon after he admitted cheating on second wife Marcheline, with the A-lister revealing last year: “When my father had an affair, it changed her life. It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother.”
Marcheline and Jon separated in 1976 after just five years of marriage and officially divorced two years later.
He later admitted in an interview: “I had an affair and there was a divorce. There was a lot of hurt and anger.”
The Sun reached out to Voight’s rep who declined to comment further.
‘THIS IS HARD WORK’
With Muhammad, it was Khalilah who says she was often left to hold the family fort while he went off gallivanting with other women.
She said: “I showed him how to change a diaper once, and he said, ‘I don’t know how you women do it. This is hard work.’
“He said: ‘Don’t you get tired?’ I said, ‘No, we can’t afford to get tired. We have moments.’
“He loved to play with the kids for a good 20 minutes, then he would be tired, and he would go somewhere else. But he loved children.”
The 71-year-old, who was born Belinda Boyd, married Muhammad in 1967 at the age of 17 and changed her name.
They had four children together – Maryum, twins Rasheda and Jamillah, and Muhammad Ali Jr – and had many showbiz friends such as Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda and, in particular, the Jackson family – with Khalilah acting as Michael’s unofficial bodyguard.
She explained: “Michael Jackson was very close to me. I stayed in his house for three weeks one time, with the whole Jackson family.
FAMILY LIFE SET ABLAZE
“Me and Michael Jackson were close friends, and I even would sometimes act as his personal security because of my martial arts background.
“Where he would go, he would take me with him. In Los Angeles, when he would go to the Hollywood Palladium, he would say: ‘Come with me, walk with me, guard me’. I even took him bicycle riding.
“We would be around him when he was young, and every time we would go in a city near him, we would go see him at his home.”
She said fame changed the famous boxer for the worse and he had many affairs, most notably with his future wife Veronica Porche, when she was just 19.
Khalilah said: “The worst thing he changed after he got more famous and more popular, it was like he could do just anything he wanted to.
“He got a little cocky, he wanted to go with all kinds of women and he changed his whole character. He didn’t particularly stay focused on his family.
“He [would] just swing himself anywhere with anybody at any time. That’s when I said I can’t stand a man like this, I have to let you go.
“It was a very sad thing because I wanted to stay married for the rest of my life.”
‘FAME CHANGED MUHAMMAD’
She revealed: “I see power in family. I’m a little bit stronger with family ties. He wasn’t into that, he kind of changed.
“He committed adultery publicly and flaunted girlfriends in front of everyone, that wasn’t nice.”
She said after their divorce in 1977, Ali was surrounded by people who were taking advantage of him, accusing his last two wives, Lonnie and Porsche, of being gold diggers.
Khalilah defended his controversial late boxing manager Herbert Muhammad, who has been criticized for handling his cash and making the athlete fight way past his prime, which may have been a contributing factor to being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
She explained: “Herbert Muhammad was an asset to Muhammad Ali. If it wasn’t for Herbert, Muhammad Ali would be bought by the Mob. It was a blessing for Herbert to be around him – producers, promoters they always take advantage of people.
“Not so much as the so-called wives taking advantage of Ali, that’s where the real money comes into play. These last two women took advantage of Ali just to get money. It wasn’t about the love of him.
“I’m going to tell you that right now, I loved him, I didn’t care about the money. A lot of the women who came after me, it was all about money, it was always about money. They robbed him more than Herbert Muhammad did.”
Despite his cheating, she claimed the pair remained close right up to his death, with Khalilah allegedly he would make sneaky phone calls behind fourth wife Lonnie’s back.
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She said: “We talked on the phone a lot, after that he would sneakily call me on my cell phone, until he got so bad with his condition when he couldn’t talk, that’s when it stopped.
“The last time he went to the hospital I knew he wasn’t going to come out of the hospital, it was just something I felt.
“We feel each other’s spirit or something, and I kind of felt that he was getting really bad. That was a sad day for me when he passed away.”
