July 14, 2008	Monday	Rajab 10, 1429

NICE, July 13: Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has given birth to twins, a boy and a girl, her doctor at a hospital in southern France said on Sunday.

Oscar winner Jolie, 33, had the twins by caesarean section on Saturday evening at the Lenval hospital on the glamorous Prom-enade des Anglais waterfront drive in Nice. Actor Brad Pitt, the twins’ father, was at her side.

The girl, named Vivienne Marcheline, weighed 2.27 kg while her brother, Knox Leon, weighed 2.28 kg, according to Jolie’s doctor, Michel Sussmann.

“The parents and the babies are in excellent health.

Everything is fine,” Sussmann said. He said the c-section had been planned for a long time but the date was brought forward “for medical reasons”.

Marcheline was the name of Jolie’s mother, also an actress, who died of cancer last year. Marcheline Bertrand raised Jolie and her brother, James Haven, after divorcing their father, actor Jon Voight, when Jolie was a toddler.

The doctor said Pitt, 44, was “perfectly calm” during the birth. “He was very moved to be there at the birth of his children,” Sussmann told reporters later on Sunday.

Jolie arrived at the Lenval hospital in late June by helicopter from the Provence villa where she and Pitt had been staying with their four other children — Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh.—Reuters