Angelina Jolie praised after posing with students while visiting daughter Zahara at Spelman College

Angelina Jolie has earned praise after “casually” visiting her daughter Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt on campus at Spelman College.

Jolie, 47, first announced Zahara, 17, would be attending the university in Atlanta, Georgia, in July. At the time, she shared a photo of her daughter along with her “Spelman sisters”.

“Zahara with her Spelman sisters! Congratulations to all new students starting this year. A very special place and an honour to have a family member as a new Spelman girl,” the Eternals star wrote.

Over the weekend, Jolie visited her daughter for Spelman’s homecoming weekend. Photos and videos shared to social media show the actor posing with her daughter’s peers throughout the visit.

“Angelina Jolie just casually walking around with her daughter at Spelman during homecoming. (I was doing community service looking an embarrassing mess),” Twitter user @coco_michelle wrote alongside a photo of herself posing with Jolie and Zahara.

Spelman alum Crystal Toussant also shared a photo of herself interacting with the mother-daughter duo on Instagram, where she wrote: “I spoke to Zahara & Angelina about her Spelman Experience!! She said she loves Spelman. I am so happy for her. Spelman is my happy place. The vessel that delivers young girls into extraordinary women who change the world.”

In another photo shared to Twitter, a Spelman student shared a photo of themselves posing with Jolie along with the caption: “I ran into my celebrity crush.”

For the visit, Jolie dressed casually in a black long-sleeve shirt, black pants and boots, while she wore her tan coat wrapped around her waist.

On social media, the photos and videos of the actor taking the time to pose for photographs during her visit to her daughter’s college prompted praise from students and fans alike, with many applauding Jolie for her down-to-earth behaviour during the visit.

“That’s nice to hear that Angelina Jolie is apparently really nice and also being humble while at Spelman and partaking in the parent festivities,” one person tweeted.

Others expressed their happiness that Jolie was able to visit her daughter at Spelman, a prestigious historically Black university or college, and not “make it about her”.

“I appreciate how Angelina Jolie shows up in Spelman spaces and doesn’t make it about her. (I kinda hate how we often make it about her.) There’s a lesson there for non-Black folks showing up in Black spaces,” one person tweeted, while another said: “I love Angelina Jolie being so supportive of her daughter at Spelman. These spaces are so sacred to us so prioritising her daughter’s experience while immersing herself is just so special.”

This is not the first time that Jolie has visited the school, as she was also present on the campus in August when she dropped her daughter off on move-in day. At the time, the actor, who also shares children Maddox, 21, Pax, 18, Shiloh, 16, and 14-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox with ex Brad Pitt, revealed she was going to “start crying” if she tried to talk about how she felt about dropping her daughter off at college.

“I’m going to start crying if I talk about today,” she said in an August video posted by the school’s vice president of student affairs, Darryl Holloman. “I haven’t started crying yet so…hopefully I can hold it together.”