In an emotional US television interview, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have said that her cancer scare and surgery have brought them closer together.
Having undergone a preventative double mastectomy and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in recent years, Jolie and her husband joined Tom Brokaw on NBC's Today show to discuss how their lives had been turned upside down, and how they drew strength from each other.
As explained in the interview, there is a history of cancer in Jolie's family. Her mother, the actress Marcheline Bertrand, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999 at the age of 49 and died in 2007. Jolie also lost her grandmother and maternal aunt to cancer.
"When I went to visit my mom in the hospital when she found out she had cancer the first time, she was going to have her ovaries removed," Jolie told Brokaw.
"She was very upset, feeling like this was they're taking out her parts that were female. There was a woman down the hall who was wailing. I later found out it was a young woman who had not had children yet, and that put everything into perspective."
Jolie later had a blood test which showed that she had an 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer.
In 2013, she had a double mastectomy and in March of this year she was told she could have signs of early ovarian cancer.
While the tumour test was negative, Jolie decided to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as a preventative measure. She was under the care of some of the medical team who had treated her late mother.
"We had some of the same nurses, some of the same doctors," she said. "So the doctor that did my ovary surgery was my mother's doctor. 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'."
Pitt, who was in France when his wife received the news, said: "I got straight on a plane to return. 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."
The World War Z star said he saw his role as one of "support".
"Whatever's got to be done to keep the family together and to keep the family together as long as possible it's got to be done," he said. "No question, it's a scary decision. There's many things that can go wrong, can go in many different directions. But it was really led by her dedication of 'This is what I've got to do. This is what I'm going to do."
He said there was "no vanity" to his wife's approach.
"It was just another one of those things in life that makes you tighter, and she was doing it for her kids, and she was doing it for her family so we could be together. It trumped everything, trumped everything and anything."
Jolie also paid tribute to Pitt's strength, saying: "He made it very clear to me that what he loved and what was a woman to him was somebody who was smart and capable and cared about her family. That it wasn't about... It's not about your physical body."
"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," she added.
Jolie concluded the interview by saying that she hoped that her experiences might help others.
"Many of us will have cancer; we will all die. And so 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."
