“This is a happy day for our family,” the star says.
Brad Pitt has issued a statement to London’s Evening Standard on partner Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy.
“Having witnessed this decision firsthand, I find Angie’s choice, as well as many others like her, absolutely heroic,” Pitt said in the statement. “I thank our medical team for their care and focus.”
“All I want is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children,” Pitt continued. “This is a happy day for our family.”
In a New York Times op-ed story written by Angelina Jolie and titled My Medical Choice, the star, 37, explained that she spent the last three months undergoing and recovering from a double mastectomy.
Jolie, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer, writes, “My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87% to under 5%,” Jolie writes. “I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
Category: family
The Real Life of Brangelina
When I met Brad Pitt the day after Easter, he was so tired that he was perhaps more reflective than usual. He had just finished a week of spring break with his family. He had camped out with them the night before on his property north of Santa Barbara, and he had woken up, he said, too early, as well as too wet. They had slept in tents, four of his six children, along with two of their friends, and then he had gotten all of them in a van and driven them down to LA.
“Angie too?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Angie too.”
I told him that I’d met her a few years before, when I profiled her for Esquire. She was making a movie about the wife of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, and the thesis of my story was that while 9/11 was supposed to make us all better — a better country and a better people — it only worked for Angelina Jolie. The story has won a kind of immortality as “The Worst Celebrity Profile Ever Written,” and when I told that to Angelina Jolie’s partner, he at first laughed and said that he hoped Esquire would use that as the title of the profile I was writing about him. Then he got serious. “But you were right,” he said. “You were right, you were right. Angie is….the best person…..”
Read more. Tom Junod’s profile of Brad Pitt will appear in the June/July issue of Esquire, which is on newsstands at the end of the month.
Angelina Jolie: My Medical Choice
MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.
We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.
On April 27, I finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved. During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work.
FYI. You can also visit Breastcancer.org and The American Cancer Society to learn more and perhaps donate.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: No Elephants at Our Wedding
When rumors began swirling that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt intended to have live elephants as part of their wedding celebration, PETA wasn’t buying it—after all, the couple had donated $2 million to an African wildlife sanctuary. A rep confirmed to us that Angelina and Brad have no intention of showcasing captive wild animals at their celebration and encouraged PETA to dispel the nasty rumor.
No they are not married…
In case you rung in the new year by avoiding all entertainment-related news, a quick recap on breaking Hollywood developments: Hugh Hefner has married a woman 60 years his junior; Kim Kardashian is pregnant with Kanye West’s baby and is celebrating with suspected fro-yo photo ops; Russell Crowe is valiantly fielding criticism of his Les Misérables performance on Twitter; and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie may have legalized their reign as the world’s most genetically perfect couple with a wedding. About the latter item, which has mutated into hundreds of “Are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Married?”–variant headlines on the Internet today…
Read more. So yeah, just a rumor guys. Unless stated otherwise by trustworthy sources in the near future.
