Here’s Why Angelina Jolie Says She Loves Her Double Mastectomy Scars
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Angelina Jolie is once again speaking publicly about the preventive double mastectomy she underwent in 2013, telling a French media outlet that she views the scars from the procedure with love — not regret — more than a decade later.
“I see my scars are a choice I made to do what I could do to stay here as long as I could with my children,” the 50-year-old actress and filmmaker said in a new interview with French Inter.
Jolie’s comments come as she continues to discuss the decision she first made public in a 2013 essay, connecting the surgery to the death of her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died in 2007 at age 56 after battling both breast and ovarian cancer.
“I love my scars because of that, you know, and I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to have the choice to do something proactive about my health. I lost my mom when I was young, and I’m raising my children without a grandmother,” the Oscar winner told French Inter.
What Jolie Has Said About Her Scars
Jolie framed her scars as markers of a full life rather than something to conceal.
“Well, I’ve always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry,” she said. “I’m not drawn to some perfect idea of a life that has no scars.”
She went further, describing the absence of scars as a sign of an incomplete life.
“So for me, no, I think this is life. And if you get to the end of your life and you haven’t made [a big, you know], you haven’t made mistakes, you haven’t made a mess, you don’t have scars, you haven’t lived a full enough life, I think,” she said.
Her latest remarks echo what she told Hello! in an October 2025 profile.
“I did choose to have that [surgery] because I lost my mother and my grandmother very young,” Jolie told Hello!, referring to her relatives’ cancer battles. “I have the BRCA gene, so I chose to have a double mastectomy a decade ago.”
“I’ve also had my ovaries removed, because that’s what took my mother. Those are my choices,” she said. “I don’t say everybody should do it that way, but it’s important to have the choice. I don’t regret it.”
A Family History of Cancer Drove the Decision
Jolie’s decision was driven by losing Bertrand to cancer. In each public discussion of the mastectomy, Jolie has tied the decision back to the loss of her mother and grandmother.
She carries the BRCA gene mutation. The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes help produce proteins to help repair an individual’s DNA, according to the NIH’s National Cancer Institute. Mutations of the genes are often linked to an increased risk of breast, ovarian and other types of cancer.
Knowing she carried this genetic mutation, Jolie chose to act before cancer could develop.
The 2013 Essay That Brought the Decision Public
Jolie first disclosed her surgery in a personal essay for The New York Times in 2013.
“Once I knew that this was my reality. I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much [as] I could,” Jolie wrote. “I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work, but I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience.”
Her focus at the time was on her children and on women who might face similar choices. She described the relief the procedure brought her family in grounding terms.
“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer. It is reassuring that they see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. They can see my small scars and that’s it. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was,” she wrote.
Jolie’s perspective has stayed the same across the years. She does not hide her scars. She does not regret her surgeries. And she continues to speak about them with a directness that invites others to consider their own health choices.
Her latest comments to French Inter echo what she told Hello! and what she wrote for The New York Times — that her scars represent survival, motherhood and a deliberate choice to be present for her children. Losing her mother to cancer at a young age meant her own children would grow up without a grandmother. That reality, Jolie has made clear, weighed heavily on her.
“I lost my mom when I was young, and I’m raising my children without a grandmother,” she told French Inter.
What Jolie Wants Others to Take From Her Experience
Throughout her public discussions on this topic, Jolie has framed her experience as her own, not a directive for others. She has emphasized that what mattered most was the ability to make an informed, proactive choice about her health.
“I don’t say everybody should do it that way, but it’s important to have the choice. I don’t regret it,” she told Hello!
For anyone navigating their own health decisions or facing a family history of cancer, Jolie’s openness offers a message: scars, whether physical or emotional, are not something to fear. In her view, they are evidence of choices made and a life lived on one’s own terms.
Readers who want to learn more about BRCA gene mutations and associated cancer risks can visit the NIH’s National Cancer Institute fact sheet.
