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Angelina Jolie had a moving message to share about cancer during the premiere of her latest film, Couture.
The Hollywood star, director and refugee advocate who portrays a woman diagnosed with cancer in the movie, recently appeared at a Q&A the Toronto International Film Festival, where an audience member revealed they'd just lost a friend to the disease.
Tearing up, Angelina recalled the loss of her own mother, Marcheline Bertrand, to breast cancer. She said, "I think I will say that one thing I remember my mother saying when she had cancer, she said to me once, we had had a dinner and people were asking her how she was feeling and she said, 'All Anybody ever asks me about is cancer.' So I would say, if you know someone who is going through something, ask them about everything else in their life as well, you know?"
Angelina added, "They're a whole person, and they're still living."
Marcheline was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999 before she passed away from breast cancer in 2007, aged 56.
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In 2013, Angelina penned a powerful essay for the New York Times where she opened up about her own preventive surgeries – a double mastectomy and the removal of her ovaries and Fallopian tubes – in the hope of being around longer for her children:
“We often speak of ‘Mommy’s mommy’ and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us,” Angelina wrote.
“They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a ‘faulty’ gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.”
(Feature Image Credit: Angelina JOlie photo by B. Lenoir/Shutterstock.com)
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