In 2002, Angelina Jolie became a mom to Maddox when he was around 6 months old when she adopted him from an orphanage in Cambodia. Jolie was romantically linked to Brad Pitt in 2005, and Pitt adopted Maddox the following year. Speaking to Vogue in 2007, Jolie recalled, "It had never crossed my mind that Mad was going to need a father — certainly not that it would be this man I just met. Until, of course, I got to know Brad and realized that he is naturally just a wonderful father. And we left a lot of it up to Mad, and he took his time and then made the decision one day." Apparently, little Maddox agreed that Brad Pitt was the ideal father figure — so he proclaimed it. As Jolie told Vogue, "He just out of the blue called him Dad."

Determined to show Maddox the joys of a simple, "normal" childhood, Brad Pitt introduced his son to hobbies like go-karting and dirt biking. Of course, the youngster also got to enjoy the perks of having a movie star dad. When Maddox was 11 years old, the father-son duo appeared together in the movie "World War Z." Thanks to Brad, who starred in the film, Maddox got to live a childhood dream by playing the role of a grotesque zombie.