Angelina Jolie has escaped to the tranquillity of an upmarket Los Angeles hotel in the wake of speculation that her planned wedding to Brad Pitt is off and their relationship on the rocks.

Jolie, 31, and her children booked into the hotel last week without her actor lover of more than a year and father of their three-month-old daughter, Shiloh Nouvel.
She checked in at the last minute after another in what has become a series of all-too-frequent rows with her heart-throb boyfriend. Pitt, meanwhile, remains alone in the sprawling $5 million Malibu mansion that recently become their home.

Hardly surprising, then, that his beloved grandmother has now come out publicly to say that the wedding Hollywood has been expecting is not likely to happen any time soon -- or, for that matter, that the chattering tables of Beverly Hills are abuzz with rumours the relationship may not see out the year.

The pillow-lipped Jolie is said to be buckling under the pressure of postnatal depression, the fact that her mother is battling a serious illness, and the relentless attention of being one half of Hollywood's golden couple.

Strikingly skinny, she has become trapped in the goldfish bowl.

Jolie is said by friends to be desperate to quit Hollywood for good to set up a nomadic existence in Africa -- all of which has put her distinctly at odds with Pitt, who wants to bring up their young family in California.

Last week, friends revealed that Jolie was insisting it was she who put their wedding on hold because she is angry that he wants her to play the "little wife".

As if to assert her independence, she immediately announced she was taking the children on a private trip to Namibia, where Shiloh was born in May.

She has also signed up to appear in Sin City II and, later this month, begins filming the role of the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart.

However, friends say it is Jolie's determination that she does not want her family to be brought up in the shallow world of Hollywood that is the major source of conflict.