HO CHI MINH CITY: She is a Hollywood idol, he is a three-year-old boy abandoned after birth, but their lives joined on March 15 when Angelina Jolie adopted the tearful Vietnamese into the family she has formed with Brad Pitt.

The Oscar-winning actress and five-year-old son Maddox, himself adopted in Cambodia, picked up Pham Quang Sang from his orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City before a formal ceremony with Vietnamese officials.

“They tried to make friends with the Vietnamese boy, who cried when he saw them because for him, they are strangers,” said Nguyen Van Trung, director of the Tam Binh centre for orphans and abandoned children. “Jolie was very moved. Both of them tried to comfort the little boy.”

She tried some Vietnamese to comfort him, repeating the phrase “khong sao dau,” or “no problem,” to the boy, whom she plans to rename Pax Thien — a combination of the Latin word for peace and the Vietnamese word for heaven.

Trung said the children and female staff at the orphanage “said farewell to Jolie and the two boys” and gave the actress flowers.

Sang is the fourth child for Jolie and partner Pitt. Aside from Maddox, the couple have a two-year-old daughter, Zahara, who was adopted in Ethiopia, and a biological daughter, Shiloh, born last May in Namibia.

Jolie and the two children were set to fly by private jet to the capital Hanoi to complete US adoption formalities, although the date of the trip was not clear.