Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt expecting baby

Angelina Jolie (left) and Brad Pitt have confirmed Jolie is pregnant with Pitt's child. File picture / Reuters

LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie is pregnant with a child fathered by her long-rumoured paramour, actor Brad Pitt, his spokeswoman said today.

Publicist Cindy Guagenti also confirmed reports that Pitt has filed papers to become the legal adoptive father of Jolie's two adopted children, son Maddox, 4, and daughter Zahara, who is about 10 months old.

Guagenti confirmed Jolie's pregnancy but declined to give further details, including when the baby was due, or to say whether the couple had plans to marry.

Representatives for Jolie were not immediately available for comment.

News of Jolie's pregnancy was first reported by People magazine, which quoted the actress as telling a charity worker in the Dominican Republic, where she is working on a movie, "Yes, I'm pregnant."

The magazine said the 30-year-old actress is expecting her baby this summer.

Pitt, 42, and Jolie met while working together on the film "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," in which they played married assassins ordered to kill each other.

They have been romantically linked in the media since 2004 and the rumours heated up after Pitt and his ex-wife, former "Friends" star Jennifer Aniston, split up last January.

Pitt's divorce became final in October but he and Jolie have until now publicly denied being anything more than friends.

Jolie, who won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for playing a psychiatric patient in "Girl, Interrupted," was divorced from actor Billy Bob Thornton in 2003. Before that she was married to actor Jonny Lee Miller, who she divorced in 1999.

A spokesman for Aniston said the actress would have no comment. "Jennifer is not in the practice of commenting on the lives of other people," he said.

- REUTERS