Angelina Jolie is grateful for the scars left behind by her double mastectomy.

"I've all the time been somebody extra within the scars and the life that individuals carry," the Mr. and Mrs. Smith star informed France Inter in a video the general public radio station posted Tuesday.

"I'm not drawn to some good concept of a life that has no scars. My scars are a alternative I made to do what I might do to remain right here so long as I might with my youngsters. I really like my scars due to that, and I'm grateful that I had the chance to have the selection to do one thing proactive about my well being."

The Oscar winner famous that her mom, Marcheline Bertrand, had died too quickly — she was 56 when she died in 2007 — after fighting ovarian and breast most cancers.

Jolie underwent a double mastectomy as a preventative measure, after studying that she had the BRCA1 gene mutation that predisposed her to breast most cancers.

"I misplaced my mother after I was younger," she mentioned, "and I'm elevating my youngsters with out a grandmother."

Jolie shares six youngsters with ex-husband Brad Pitt: Maddox, 24; Pax, 22; Zahara, 21; Shiloh, 19; and 17-year-old fraternal twins Knox and Vivienne.

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"So I feel that is life," she mentioned. "And should you get to the top of your life and also you haven't made errors, you haven't made a multitude, you don't have scars, you haven't lived a full sufficient life, I feel.”

Jolie defined her resolution to have her operation in a New York Occasions column titled "My Medical Selection" in 2013.

"I wished to write down this to inform different girls that the choice to have a mastectomy was not straightforward. However it’s one I’m very joyful that I made," Jolie wrote. "My probabilities of creating breast most cancers have dropped from 87 p.c to beneath 5 p.c. I can inform my youngsters that they don’t must concern they are going to lose me to breast most cancers."

The actress, producer, and director mentioned she was talking out on the subject "as a result of there are various girls who have no idea that they is likely to be residing beneath the shadow of most cancers. It’s my hope that they, too, will be capable of get gene examined, and that if they’ve a excessive danger, they, too, will know that they’ve sturdy choices."

In her newest film, Couture, Jolie performs a movie director who's recognized with the illness.

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"In fact, it’s going to carry up many private issues," she informed Variety in September. "However I’ve all the time discovered the heaviest movies are likely to have probably the most loving units. There’s one thing fairly comforting about having actual conversations and having actual emotions with a shared neighborhood. It was fairly therapeutic in some ways."

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