Angelina Jolie was 37 when her doctors gave her a number she couldn’t ignore: 87 %.
That was her risk of developing breast cancer due to a mutation in the BRCA1 gene. And she knew all too well what that meant, because her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of cancer at 56 after nearly a decade of battling the disease. On May 14, 2013, the actress decided to tell all in an op-ed in The New York Times: she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy.
As she explained, after the operation her risk dropped from 87 % to 5 %. Two years later, in 2015, at age 39 and with six children, she also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed. In December 2025, at 50, she showed her scars for the first time on the cover of Time France. Jolie said she made her case public so that other women at risk would know what options are available.
