HOLLYWOOD golden couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the proud parents of new-born twins, a boy named Knox Leon and a girl called Vivienne Marcheline, a French hospital announced overnight.
Jolie, 33, gave birth to the twins during a half-hour caesarean operation at a maternity clinic in Nice on the French Riviera.
"Everything went smoothly. The children are doing very well, the mother is doing very well and the father is doing very well,`` gynaecologist Michel Sussmann said.
The first photograph of the baby celebrities was sold to a US paper for $US11 million ($11.5 million), the regional Nice-Matin newspaper said, adding that the money would be given to a humanitarian cause.
Twenty or so photographers were waiting outside the hospital, a visibly smaller paparazzi pack than the one present at the beginning of the month, when Jolie was admitted.
Knox Leon weighed 2.27kg and Vivienne Marcheline 2.28kg.
Pitt "was very calm and was not at all disturbed`` by the operation, said Dr Sussman.
"When the babies arrived he was very euphoric`` and Jolie had a "blinding smile``.
Jolie is set to stay several more days at the Fondation Lenval clinic to recover. The twins were born slightly earlier than scheduled, Dr Sussman said.
The twins brought the number of Jolie`s children with 44-year-old Pitt to six.
Dubbed "Brangelina`` in the press, the couple have adopted three children: Maddox, six, born in Cambodia; four-year-old Pax, born in Vietnam; and Zahara, three, born in Ethiopia.
Their biological child, Shiloh, was born May 2006 in Namibia.
The pair, who frequently top magazine lists of the world`s most beautiful people, set up home in May in a chateau they rented from an American acquaintance in France`s Provence region.
The couple, who met in 2005 while filming Mr and Mrs Smith, have seen their relationship flourish despite frenzied tabloid attention and relentless speculation about a possible split.
Jolie is the daughter of actor Jon Voight. She began her meteoric rise to stardom when she took home an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1999`s Girl, Interrupted.
Both Pitt and Jolie top the list of highest paid Hollywood stars, making $US10 million - $US20 million ($10.4 million to $20.8 million a film.
They remain coy about whether they ever plan to marry.
"People have made a lot out of it that we`re not,`` twice-divorced Jolie told a recent interviewer. "But we both have been married before, and it`s very easy to get married, but it`s not easy to build a family and be parents together.
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