In 2013, Angelina Jolie underwent a double mastectomy, leaving her with “scars” that she says represent her life.
In an interview with French Internazionale, she explains, “Well, I’ve always been someone who was more interested in the scars and the lives that people carry with them.”
The Popular actress further explains her philosophy about her scars, saying, “I’m not attracted to a perfect idea of a life without scars. So no, I think, hey, you know, I see my scars as a choice I made to do what I could do to stay here as long as I could with my kids.”
She continues, “That’s why I love my scars, you know, and I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to have the choice to proactively do something about my health. I lost my mother when I was young, and I’m raising my children without a grandmother.”
Jolie ultimately comes to the conclusion that it is important to make mistakes to learn from them, because if you don’t, they haven’t lived their lives to the fullest.
“So for me, no, I think this is life. And when you get to the end of your life and you haven’t made it yet [a big, you know]You haven’t made any mistakes, you haven’t messed up, you haven’t got any scars, you haven’t lived enough, I guess.”
Mastectomy is an operation to remove breast tissue to combat breast cancer.
In 2013, Jolie explained that after her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, was diagnosed with cancer, doctors told her she had the “faulty gene,” BRCA1, a symptom that increases her chances of breast cancer.
“I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not an easy one,” the actress wrote New York Times opinion piece My medical choice.
“But I’m very happy that I made it. My chances of getting breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to less than 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t have to worry about losing me to breast cancer.”
In addition, Jolie also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in 2015 as a measure to prevent the development of ovarian cancer.
