Angelina Jolie's Brother Makes Deeply Personal Announcement With Ex-Wife By His Side

James Haven has publicly come out as gay, and the person sitting beside him for the announcement was his former wife and longtime friend, Romi Marie Imbelli. The 53-year-old actor and director shared the deeply personal news during a livestream on August 6.

Haven, the older brother of Angelina Jolie and son of actors Jon Voight and the late Marcheline Bertrand, married Imbelli in 2024 after more than two decades of friendship. Their marriage was short-lived, but the end of it did not end their relationship with each other. The pair have remained close since separating.

Imbelli gave Haven the space to tell the story in his own words through her Substack, Breathe Mija. Rather than making a brief announcement, Haven read from a letter explaining how feelings he remembers from childhood eventually became part of understanding his sexuality as an adult.

Haven began by looking back at the things that made him feel most like himself when he was young. "I'm gay. When I was a little boy, I was absolutely obsessed with the Disney princesses. I would sneak glitter onto my cheeks, swipe mascara onto my lashes, and for those moments, I felt like magic," he said.

Long before this announcement, Haven had built a quieter Hollywood career than his famous sister. He appeared with Jolie in Gia in 1998 and Original Sin in 2001, but he said the memories he was describing from childhood came from a time when he did not yet have the words to understand why certain forms of self-expression felt so natural to him.

He said he 'didn't have the language back then to explain why I just knew it made me feel more like me'. Haven then put that feeling more clearly: "It was never about pretending to be someone else. It was about letting a part of myself shine that had always been there,"

Angelina Jolie‘s brother James Haven got married last year for 15 days Instagram/@madre_romi_

As he grew older, Haven said that freedom started being replaced by doubt about whether parts of his personality needed to be hidden. "I started wondering if that sparkle was something I had to hide to be accepted by the 'normal' boys around me. Like so many gay kids, I learned to question parts of myself long before I learned to celebrate them."

His announcement was therefore framed less as discovering a completely different identity and more as stopping the effort to conceal something he already knew about himself. Haven added: "Coming out isn't about becoming someone new, it's about allowing everyone else to meet the person who has been here all along."

He also addressed the people closest to him, including a family that has spent decades under public attention. Rather than demanding any particular reaction, he said: "I hope my family and others can choose love over fear, understanding over judgment, and connection over the beliefs that may have kept us apart."

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Haven continued his message by asking relatives to look past the label itself. "I hope they can look beyond the labels and simply see me with the same heart, the same laugh, the same soul they've always known."

Imbelli's presence beside him gave the announcement another layer. The pair signed a statement together explaining that what had happened between them could not be reduced to one person's story, writing that 'this story was never just mine. It was ours'.

That choice of words helps explain why the former couple appeared together rather than treating Haven's announcement as something completely separate from their marriage. Their relationship changed dramatically, but both presented the process as one they had experienced and worked through together.

James is also preparing for a more public chapter

Haven has spent much of his adult life with a far lower profile than Jolie, but his coming-out announcement may not be the last time people hear him discussing major turning points in people's lives.

Page Six reported alongside the announcement that Haven is preparing a weekly podcast called Save Haven with James Haven. The show is being produced by Wonder Peak Media and is expected to focus on the moments and choices that shaped its guests.

No launch date was announced beyond the podcast being described as coming soon. Still, the project puts Haven in a more public role at the same time he has chosen to speak openly about a part of his own life that he says he spent years learning to accept.

Their 23-year friendship survived a 15-day marriage

Haven and Imbelli had already known each other for 23 years when they married in a small Laguna Beach, California, ceremony on August 12, 2024. Their parents attended the intimate wedding, while Jolie was not there. Imbelli filed to have the marriage annulled on August 27, only 15 days after the ceremony.

The timeline became public months later. PEOPLE reported in March 2025 that the filing listed 'fraud' as the reason being claimed for nullity of the marriage. Public reporting does not establish that Haven's sexuality was itself the legal basis for that filing, and the former couple's current statements describe a relationship that has continued in a different form.

Jolie's relationship with her brother has attracted unusual attention before, most famously after the siblings kissed on the red carpet around the 2000 Academy Awards. In the new joint letter, however, Imbelli described her role in Haven's story in very different terms: "I wasn't here to out someone I love. I was here to help set someone free. There is a difference. In return he set me free,"

Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images

Imbelli then asked people hearing Haven's announcement to give him room to move forward without turning the moment into another source of shame. "Forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love have carried us to this moment. We ask only that you give him the same compassion as he learns to walk through this world with his head held high, exactly as God made him."

Their letter also made clear that accepting the truth about their relationship did not mean pretending their marriage or the love behind it had never existed. "Love doesn't always fit into the boxes we're taught it should. Sometimes it transforms. Sometimes it changes shape. Sometimes it asks us to let go of what we imagined so we can embrace what is true."

For Imbelli, the label attached to their bond has changed, but the person she considers family has not disappeared from her life. She ended that thought with: "I'll always love him. Just not as his wife, but as my family, my best friend, and one of the greatest loves of my life."