Angelina Jolie bravely had both of her healthy breasts removed in February, and had reconstructive surgery in April, after finding out she had an 87% risk of contracting breast cancer. Jolie found out she carried the BRCA1 cancer gene. Jolie lost her mother, Marcheline Bertrand to ovarian cancer when Marcheline was only 56. She also revealed she has a 50% chance of contracting ovarian cancer. She said:

‘Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65% risk of getting it, on average. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could, I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy.’

‘I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.’

‘I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer,’ she continued. ‘It is my hope that they, too, will be will able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.

‘Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.’

Jolie worked during her treatment, speaking out about violence against women and children at the G8 summit in London last month.

In the article entitled My Medical Choice for the New York Times she praised the support of her fiance, Brad Pitt, and their children Maddox, 11, Pax, nine, Zahara, eight, Shiloh, six, and four-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, saying: ‘We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.’