I asked Ms. Jolie if she ever felt like the coach of a small team, and she replied that more often she felt part of a fraternity.

“They really help me so much. We’re really such a unit,” she said. “They’re the best friends I’ve ever had. Nobody in my life has ever stood by me more.”

That last sentence hung in the air, perhaps a subtle allusion to, or indictment of, Mr. Pitt, who adopted Maddox, Pax and Zahara, and is the biological father of Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne. The dissolution of their 12-year romantic partnership came last September, after an incident aboard a private jet — purportedly involving Mr. Pitt and Maddox — prompted her to file for divorce.

Shortly afterward, Ms. Jolie and the kids moved out of Mr. Pitts’s estate, living in a rental for nine months as she struggled with the decision about whether to buy a new home.

“It took me a few months to realize that I was really going to have to do it. That there was going to have to be another base regardless of everything,” she said, her voice falling quiet and low, as it would each time the subject of the split arose. “That there was going to have to be a home. Another home.”

The new house, a Beaux Arts manse that was once the residence of the legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, is a beaut, with a library, rolling lawns, cascading fountains that burble into the pool, and a view of the Griffith Observatory. Ms. Jolie had an elaborate treehouse built — “more a parkour treehouse,” she said — and the kids helped decorate and pick out the furniture for the whole house. They have an agreement, Ms. Jolie said, that not everyone can agree on everything, but you have to try to like it if you don’t hate it. If you do hate it, you can overrule.