LOS ANGELES - In what was arguably the most anticipated delivery in the world, Angelina Jolie gave birth to Brad Pitt’s daughter Saturday in Africa, Pitt’s publicist announced.
“The night of May 27, 2006 in Namibia, Africa, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed their daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. No further information is being given,” publicist Cindy Guagenti said in a statement.
No photographs were being released, she added.
A celebrity magazine earlier Saturday reported Jolie was scheduled to give birth via Caesarian section.
In Touch Weekly wrote on its web site that Jolie, 30, had planned to give birth to her child with Pitt at an African resort where they are staying, but doctors told Jolie she would be safer in a hospital.
“There’s nothing seriously wrong. They are expecting it all to be routine,” the magazine quoted an unnamed “insider” as saying.
The baby’s arrival had been the subject of intense press speculation in recent months, compelling the superstar couple to decamp to Africa for privacy.
The actors were linked romantically shortly after appearing together in the 2005 movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
Jolie, 30, is a frequent visitor to Africa and serves as goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Jolie has two adopted children: toddler Zahara, from Ethiopia, and 4-year-old Maddox, from Cambodia.
Both had their surnames legally changed to Jolie-Pitt after Pitt announced his intentions to co-adopt the children.
Pitt and actress Jennifer Aniston divorced last fall.
Jolie, who won an Oscar for her supporting role in 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” is divorced from Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller.
In an e-mail to the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France on Tuesday, Pitt wrote he couldn’t attend the screening of his new film, “Babel,” due to “the imminent arrival of the newest addition to our family.”
The expected birth of the first biological child for both Jolie and Pitt, 42, has drawn intense media attention — and equally determined efforts by the couple to maintain their privacy.
Arriving at the coastal town of Walvis Bay last month, they have been shielded by their own bodyguards and Namibian police at the luxury Burning Shores resort hotel. Pitt and Jolie have largely kept out of sight along with her two adopted children, Maddox, 4, and Zahara, 16 months.
Last month, the couple’s security chief gave a local journalist a statement signed by Pitt and Jolie asking that they be left alone.
Photographers have gotten a few shots, but for the most part, they have had to settle for photos of large, green barriers set up on the beach to block the view of prying lenses.
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