Angelina Jolie makes rare comment on double mastectomy: ‘My scars are a choice’

Angelina Jolie declared that her double mastectomy scars “are a choice” she is “grateful” she was able to make.

“I’ve always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry,” the actress said in an interview with France Inter Tuesday. “I’m not drawn to a perfect idea of a life that has no scars.”

“My scars are a choice I made to stay here as long as I could with my children. I love my scars because of that. And I’m grateful that I had the opportunity and the choice to do something proactive about my health.”

Jolie, 50, noted that being able to undergo the preventative procedure was especially meaningful to her since she lost her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, to cancer when she was young and is now “raising [her] children without a grandmother.”

Bertrand was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999 and later diagnosed with breast cancer. She passed away in January 2007 at the age of 56.

“So for me, I think this is life, and if you get to the end of your life and you haven’t made mistakes and you haven’t made a mess, you don’t have scars, you haven’t lived a full enough life,” Jolie concluded.

Jolie shares six children with ex-husband Brad Pitt: Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 18 and twins Knox and Vivienne, 16.

The Oscar winner underwent the mastectomy in 2013 after she tested positive for a mutation in the BRCA1 gene and doctors told her she had a nearly 90 percent chance of contracting breast cancer.

At the time, she also published her first-hand account in a powerful New York Times op-ed.

“The decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer,” Jolie wrote in the piece.

Two years later, Jolie also made the decision to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.

In the years since, the “Girl, Interrupted” actress has rarely made comments on the procedure.

Last October, she shared a similar sentiment about having no regrets about her decision.

“Those are my choices. I don’t say everybody should do it that way, but it’s important to have the choice. And I don’t regret it,” she told Hello! Magazine.

In December 2025, she bared her double mastectomy scars for the first time when she posed for Time France.

“I share these scars with many women I love,” the “Mr. & Mrs Smith” star told the outlet. “I’m always moved when I see other women share theirs.”

“I wanted to join them, knowing that TIME France would be sharing information about breast health, prevention and knowledge about breast cancer.”