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Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Sit Down For Rare Interview, Discuss Strong Marriage Despite Health Scares

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 04:44 PST, Nov 2, 2015

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt recently sat down for a rare interview, where they discussed how they have managed to keep their marriage strong despite Jolie’s health scares.

“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,” Angelina told NBC’s Tom Brokaw in the interview that appeared on Today on Monday.

In March, Jolie made the difficult decision to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed after finding out that she carried the BRCA1 cancer gene, which means that she was possibly showing signs of early-stage ovarian cancer.

“There was no vanity to my wife’s approach,” Pitt said bluntly. “It was mature.’This is our life and we’re going to make the best of it.’ There was a strength in that. It was just another one of those things in life that makes you tighter, and she was doing it for the kids, and she was doing it for her family so we could be together.”

Jolie praised her husband for his support in her decision. She said Pitt told her he would always love her, that body parts were not what made her a woman in his eyes, and he wouldn’t let her feel like any less of a woman.

Jolie’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999 and died at 56-years-old in 2007. Her mother’s eight-year battle with cancer encouraged her to start having testing done to determine if she carried the cancerous genes. Doctors performed the testing and found that Jolie tested positive for a gene with an 87 percent risk of her developing breast cancer. Jolie then decided to undergo a double mastectomy to have both of her breasts removed in 2013.

“I was out in France, and Angie called me and 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,” Pitt said, holding back tears. “And not being there is a horrible feeling.”

Although she made it through the surgeries fine, Jolie, 40, did admit that having her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed caused early-onset menopause.

“Every woman is different when they go through menopause, and… I didn’t know emotionally how I would feel,” she said. “I knew the breast would be a bigger surgery and physically changing. The ovaries is more, your hormones changing and your emotions changing, but it’s different. You feel different.”

The couple, who have been together for 10 years, married one, and have six children together, also spoke about their upcoming film By the Sea, their first time being on screen together since their 2005 film Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In the film, set in the ’70s, the pair play a troubled husband and wife, and the story documents their failed marriage. Jolie and Brad both said the film is not imitating their life, as their marriage is actually very stable. If their marriage was failing, they wouldn’t have been able to portray the characters.

“We were joking at one point this is the beginning this is 10 years this is what 10 years of marriage will do to you,” Jolie said. “I’m counting on the audience to know that if it was close to us at all, we could never make this film. It’s because we’re actually very, very stable and these aren’t our issues.”

Jolie not only acts in the film, she is also the writer, director, and producer. By the Sea hits theaters on November 13.

What do you think about Angelina Jolie’s and Brad Pitt’s very honest interview? Leave your comments below.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

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