Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt give emotional interview about cancer surgery
Watch their open interview with the Today show
In an extremely rare joint interview, Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have spoken openly about her preventative cancer surgery.
Angelina underwent a double mastectomy in 2013 after a test found she had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer.
Then earlier this year, Angelina had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed when a blood test revealed she could be in the early stages of ovarian cancer.
Speaking candidly during their joint interview, Brad told interviewer Tom Brokaw his wife “did it for the kids.”
“There was no vanity to my wife’s approach. It was mature. There was a strength in that,” Brad, 51, explained.
“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."
Praising the support of her husband, 40-year-old Angelina said: “I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn’t something where I was going to feel less of a woman because my husband wasn’t going to 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.”
Getting tearful during the emotional interview, Angelina explained that her mother Marcheline Bertrand, who died aged 56 from ovarian cancer, asked her surgeon to look after her daughter.
“We had some of the same nurses, some of the same doctors. So, the doctor that did my ovary surgery was my mother’s doctor. 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’.”
Brad and Angelina co-star in the upcoming romantic drama movie By The Sea, which was directed and produced by Angelina. It’s their first on screen collaboration since Mr & Mrs Smith in 2005.