Angelina Jolie, 50, recently revealed how her late mother felt during her battle with multiple types of cancer.
Jolie’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died from complications of ovarian and breast cancer in 2007.
During a recent Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival for her new film, Couture, Jolie responded emotionally to a question about how people can find hope through their struggles.
Jolie plays a film director named Maxine who is simultaneously dealing with both a divorce and a breast cancer diagnosis.
“I think I will say that one thing I remember my mother saying when she had cancer, she said to me once, we had had a dinner and people were asking her how she was feeling, and she said, ‘All anybody ever asks me about is cancer,’” she explained.
The Oscar winner also said, “If you know someone who is going through something, ask them about everything else in their life as well, you know? They’re a whole person and they’re still living.”
After testing positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, which increases the risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers, Jolie had a preventive double mastectomy in 2013.
That same year, the Tomb Raider star published an op-ed in The New York Times about her experience with the procedure, which led to a nearly 40 percent increase in BRCA testing rates, according to a 2015 study by the AARP Public Policy Institute.
Jolie isn’t the only celebrity who’s openly discussed a parent who’s dealt with cancer.
In July, actor and model Kate Beckinsale, 52, shared the heartbreaking experience of losing her mother, Judy Loe, to cancer.
“She died the night of July 15th in my arms after immeasurable suffering,” Beckinsale posted on Instagram along with several pictures of her mother from over the years.
Actor Patrick Dempsey, 59, was a caregiver for his mother, Amanda Dempsey, who died after living with ovarian cancer for 17 years.
“In my mother’s case, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the late ’90s,” Dempsey said in an Instagram video in June. “Then over the next 14 years, she would have 12 reoccurrences, so it had a profound impact on our family, and everybody in the family handles it differently.”
AARP has resources on both ovarian and breast cancer, including five warning signs of ovarian cancer you shouldn’t ignore and six warning signs of breast cancer.