Angelina Reveals What Her Mother Made A Cancer Doctor Promise She'd Do
May 24 2018, Updated 3:37 p.m. ET
Angelina Jolie revealed Monday that her late mother Marcheline Bertrand had once pleaded with a family doctor to remove her ovaries one day, in hopes of saving her life.
"We had some of the same nurses, some of the same doctors; the doctor that did my ovary surgery was my mother's doctor," Jolie, appearing alongside husband Brad Pitt in a joint interview on TODAY, told legendary journalist Tom Brokaw. "And apparently my mother had said to her, 'Promise me you will take Angie's ovaries out.'
"So when we kind of got together, we both had a big cry, and she said, 'I promised your mother, and I gotta do this.'''
Jolie had the procedure performed this past March, nearly two years after her double mastectomy to prevent cancer after Bertrand's premature death at 56 in 2007 after an eight-year battle for her health.
She said that her mother's brave battle influenced her latest project, By the Sea.
"We can't say what the whole film is about, but a lot of the film was when I went to visit my mom in the hospital, when she found out she had cancer the first time, she was gonna have her ovaries removed and she was very upset, feeling like … they're taking out her parts that were female, and there was a woman down the hall who was wailing," the A-lister said. "I later found out it was a young woman who had not had children yet, and that put everything into perspective."
In the chat, Pitt recalled the harrowing details of Jolie's admission to him that a blood test revealed she could be prone to early-stage ovarian cancer.
"I was out in France, and Angie called me and I got straight on a plane to return,'' the handsome actor said. "Seeing my wife have to be her strongest and knowing that it's the scariest news is terribly moving. And not being there is a horrible feeling."
Pitt lauded his stunning wife for having "no vanity" in her approach to stay healthy, making the "mature" decision for him and their six kids: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Knox and Vivienne.
"There was a strength in that," he said. "It was just another one of those things in life that makes you tighter, and she was doing it for the kids, and she was doing it for her family so we could be together."
The Oscar-winning actress added of her husband: "I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn't something where I was gonna feel less of a woman because my husband wasn't gonna let that happen.
"To face these issues together and speak about them and talk about what it is to be human, I think can be a beautiful thing."
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, sources close to the actress recently said that "Angelina has never been able to accept her mother's death," as "there is a lot of anger there over losing her mom at such a young age, just 56-years-old. Her kids never got to know their grandmother, and Angelina feels cheated.
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"Angelina can't stay in one place longer than several months because she is literally running from the repressed grief."
The A-list couple appeared to promote By the Sea, their first joint project since 2005's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which brought about the beginning of their legendary Hollywood romance.
