Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt's Bond Grew Stronger After Two Cancer Scares

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt recently sat down with Tom Brokaw on "Today,” opening up about their marriage and Angelina's cancer ordeal.

Earlier this year, Jolie underwent surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes after showing signs of early-stage ovarian cancer. Her mother Marcheline Bertrand died of ovarian cancer in 2007.

She revealed, "We had some of the same nurses, some of the same doctors. So, the doctor that did my ovary surgery was my mother's doctor. And apparently my mother had said to her, 'Promise me you will take Angie's ovaries out.' So when we kind of got together, we both had a big cry, and she said, 'I promised your mother, and I gotta do this.'"

Her ovary surgery caused her to experience menopause earlier than expected. Jolie said, "Every woman is different when they go through menopause, and... I didn't know emotionally how I would feel. 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."

In 2013, Jolie made the decision to undergo a double mastectomy after she tested positive for a gene that gave her an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. Pitt shared, "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. And not being there is a horrible feeling."


Jolie's cancer scare only made her bond with Pitt stronger. He said, "There was no vanity to my wife's approach. It was mature. 'This is our life and we're gonna 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 added, "I knew through the surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn't something where I was gonna feel less of a woman because my husband wasn't gonna let that happen. 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."

Brad and Angelina are promoting their new film "By the Sea," their first movie together since their hit 2005 film "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

Jolie revealed that she came up with the idea for the film after learning about her mom's own cancer struggle. "We can't say what the whole film is about, but a lot of the film was when I went to visit my mom in the hospital, when she found out she had cancer the first time, she was gonna have her ovaries removed, [and] she was very upset, feeling like… they're taking out her parts that were female, and there was a woman down the hall who was wailing. I later found out it was a young woman who had not had children yet, and that put everything into perspective."