- - Angelina Jolie Explains Why She Loves Her 'Scars' Following Double Mastectomy

Madison E. GoldbergFebruary 11, 2026 at 5:01 AM

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Angelina Jolie

Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty

Angelina Jolie says her double mastectomy scars are "a choice I made to do what I could do to stay here as long as I could with my children"

Jolie underwent the surgery in 2013, after her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died at age 56 in 2007 after being diagnosed with cancer

Jolie plays a character who has been diagnosed with breast cancer in her upcoming film Couture

Angelina Jolie is opening up about why she loves her "scars" from a double mastectomy in 2013.

Jolie, 50, spoke about her scars in a new interview with the French media outlet French Inter. "Well, I've always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry," the actress began.

"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."

Angelina Jolie at a TIFF event standing against a branded wall

Michael Loccisano/Getty

"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.

Jolie’s mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died at age 56 in 2007 after being diagnosed with cancer. 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.

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“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.

In her upcoming film Couture, which takes place at Paris Fashion Week, Jolie plays a filmmaker going through a divorce who is diagnosed with breast cancer. She speaks both English and French in the film, as seen in the first footage that dropped on Jan. 6.

The film initially premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival in September.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”