"The mother and her babies are doing very well," reported the Fondation Lenval hospital, located in the southern Mediterranean city of Nice.
Jolie slipped out at 4 a.m. Saturday with the twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, deftly evading most of the paparazzi who have followed the family for months in southern France, ever since Jolie arrived for the Cannes film festival in May. It was not immediately clear if the twins' father, actor Brad Pitt, was with them.
AP Television cameras outside the hospital filmed a large white van with tinted windows leaving one of the hospital's back entrances at that time. No other vehicles left the hospital for the next several hours.
Jolie, 33, checked into the hospital on July 2 and delivered the babies by Cesarian section ten days later. Knox Leon weighed 5.03 pounds and the Vivienne Marcheline 5 pounds.
Jolie's obstetrician, Dr. Michel Sussmann, told reporters after the birth that the 44-year-old Pitt was at Jolie's side during the delivery, which he said had been pushed up from its originally planned date "for medical reasons" so the babies could be born "in the best conditions."
The Jolie-Pitt clan had rented four rooms on the fifth floor of the maternity ward of the Lenval hospital, appropriately located on Nice's beach-front California Avenue. The hospital had treated the mirrored blue windows of Jolie's room, which looked out the Mediterranean, with a special material that blocked telephoto lenses from peering in.
Jolie managed to check into the hospital unobserved, reportedly arriving by helicopter on the hospital's rooftop helipad. That fueled rumors she would also leave the clinic by helicopter.
In its statement, the Fondation Lenval thanked the Jolie-Pitts for choosing its hospital. It also thanked the hospital staff "for the attention and care they paid to the family" and the "journalists around the hospital who did their best to respect their privacy."
The Nice-Matin newspaper has reported that an unnamed U.S. publication has paid $11 million for exclusive rights to the first photos of the Jolie-Pitt twins and that the proceeds will go to charity.
Jolie and Pitt have four other children - Maddox, 6; Pax, 4; Zahara, 3; and Shiloh, 2. Before Jolie checked into the hospital in Nice, the family set up a household in Correns, 60 miles away.
Jolie's latest film, the thriller "Wanted" with James McAvoy, has racked up $112 million in its first three weeks in the United States. The action flick - about a secret society of assassins stars Jolie as a gun-toting sexpot - opened last week in France.
The new mother also stars in director Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," a 1930s-era drama about a kidnapping that premiered at Cannes this year. Jolie also did voiceovers for the animated comedy "Kung Fu Panda," which has brought in over $200 million this summer in U.S. ticket sales alone.
