Angelina Jolie Says Playing a Character Who Has Breast Cancer Helped Her Start a Conversation with Her Daughters

The actress stars as a filmmaker who has been diagnosed with breast cancer in her new film 'Couture'

NEED TO KNOW

• Angelina Jolie says her new role helped her discuss breast cancer and genetic risks with her daughters

• Jolie previously underwent preventive surgeries after learning she carried the BRCA1 gene linked to breast and ovarian cancer
• The actress shared she embraces her scars as symbols of her proactive health choices and love for her children

Angelina Jolie's newest film role helped foster a very important conversation with her daughters.

While speaking with Hello Mag at the Vertical Celebrates Couture event at The Whitby Hotel on Tuesday, June 16, the actress, 51, shared that playing a filmmaker who has been diagnosed with breast cancer in her new movie Couture helped open a conversation about the illness with her own daughters.

"The film itself is going to help me talk to my daughters about it," said Jolie, whose mom, Marcheline Bertrand, died due to complications from ovarian and breast cancer in 2007.

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"I’ve spoken to them, of course, a bit about it, but even telling them that it’s coming out and they were talking to me about what it’s about — it got us into the conversation about the gene and maybe if they have it and how medicine’s changing or how we live life or all the many things that could happen and not to be afraid," she continued. "And all of us go through something in life."

"All of us are being challenged in one way or another, and all of us have choices to make of how we approach that. And how we have to learn to lean on each other and know that we’re not the only ones going through something."

Jolie is mom to six kids — Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 19, and 17-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

In a May 2013 ​​New York Times op-ed titled “My Medical Choice,” Jolie wrote that doctors told her that tests found she had the “faulty gene,” BRCA1, which significantly increased her risk of breast cancer.

“I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy,” Jolie wrote in 2013. “But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

In March 2015, Jolie said she also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as a preventive measure against developing ovarian cancer.

This past February, Jolie opened up about why she loves her scars following her double mastectomy in 2013.

"Well, I've always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry," the actress began in an interview with the French media outlet French Inter.

"I'm not drawn to some perfect idea of a life that has no scars. So no, I think, hey, you know, I see my scars are a choice I made to do what I could do to stay here as long as I could with my children," the Oscar winner explained.

The Couture star continued, "I love my scars because of that, you know, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to have the choice to do something proactive about my health. I lost my mom when I was young, and I'm raising my children without a grandmother."

"So for me, no, I think this is life. And if you get to the end of your life and you haven't made [a big, you know], you haven't made mistakes, you haven't made a mess, you don't have scars, you haven't lived a full enough life, I think," Jolie concluded.

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