1st August, 2017
By Funmilola Olukomaiya
One of Hollywood’s multi award winning and highest-paid actresses, filmmaker and humanitarian, Angelina Jolie, is the alluring cover star for Vanity Fair’s latest issue.
The American actress who’s now a single mother managing the day-to-day chaos of six kids and the trauma of her split from Brad Pitt in this issue bore it all out about her groundbreaking Netflix original movie about Cambodia’s genocide, which is also a thank you to the nation that transformed her.
At her new L.A. mansion, Jolie reveals the tension between the two Angelinas and the reason her life will never be normal.
On dealing with the Cancer scare, removal of her breasts and ovaries and her general well-being as a whole, Jolie said:
Her protectiveness over the kids has become all that more fierce due to her recent brushes with the spectre of ovarian cancer; the disease took her mother’s life when she was just 56, as well as those of other family members.
In a 2013 New York Times op-ed column, Jolie chronicled her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery after she learned she had the BRCA1 gene. Two years later, while working in the editing room on By the Sea, she got a call from the doctor saying that he was concerned about certain levels in her blood work that potentially suggested cancer.
“Ten minutes later, the room’s spinning, and you just think, How . . . ?” She kept the news from the kids, did further tests, and waited a few agonizing days. When she finally learned she didn’t have cancer, “I dropped to my knees.” She made an appointment to get her ovaries taken out. “I went into the actual surgery happy as they come. I was skipping. Because at that point it was just preventative.” She instantly went into menopause.
Last year, in addition to hypertension, Jolie developed Bell’s palsy, a result of damage to facial nerves, causing one side of her face to droop. “Sometimes women in families put themselves last,” she says, “until it manifests itself in their own health.” Jolie credits acupuncture for her full recovery from the condition.
Lately, her skin has become drier, she reports, and she has extra grey hairs. She quips, “I can’t tell if it’s menopause or if it’s just been the year I’ve had.”
The idea that she could still be anyone’s idea of a sex symbol is laughable to her. But she says, “I actually feel more of a woman because I feel like I’m being smart about my choices, and I’m putting my family first, and I’m in charge of my life and my health. I think that’s what makes a woman complete.”
See pictures from the magazine spread below:
Read the full interview here.