She admits she spent her childhood ‘always worried’ about her mother Marcheline Bertrand.
And as a result, Angelina Jolie is committed to ensuring her six children do not feel responsible for her – despite her own well publicised health issues.
‘I want to make sure my kids are never worried about me,’ she tells the November issue of the WSJ.
‘Even if I’m going through something, I make sure they are very aware that I’m totally fine.’
Scroll down for video
She adds: ‘I’ll stop and make a joke, I talk to them. I never, ever want them to have that secret worry and feel that they have to take care of me.’
That importance of that commitment comers into focus when considering Angelina’s recent health scares.
After learning she had an 87per cent risk of breast cancer after being diagnosed with the defective BRCA1 gene, the actress underwent a preventive double mastectomy two years ago.
See more of the latest news and updates on Angelina Jolie and husband Brad Pitt
When tests showed she was showing early signs of ovarian cancer this was followed by a full hysterectomy earlier this year – plunging her into full menopause.
But, she explains, she ensures her concerns about her health doesn’t rest on her children’s shoulders.
And along with husband Brad Pitt, she does this by keeping family life as normal as possible.
‘We wake up, we make breakfast,’ she explains. ‘In our domestic life, we’re Mom and Dad.
‘And often we’re dorky Mom and Dad, which the kids find ridiculous.’
Angelina calls Marcheline, who gave up her own acting career to raise her two children alone, ‘the greatest mother.’
But, she adds, as a child ‘I was always worried about her.’
Angelina struggled with depression as a teen and began self-harming.
‘I grew up in L.A., where focus is very inward. I didn’t know why I was so destructive and miserable,’ she tells the magazine.
‘I didn’t appreciate or understand my life.’
Being the father of a famous actor, Jon Voight, didn’t help.
‘I was raised in a place where if you have fame and money and you’re decent-looking and have the ability to work in this industry, you have everything in the world,’ she said. ‘Then you attain those things and realize you still couldn’t be more empty. I didn’t know where to put myself.’
Angelina’s husband Brad also talked to the WSJ for the feature on his wife – praising her incredible drive.
‘You have to understand that this is a woman who never knew she’d make it to 40,’ he said.
‘This is a woman who had watched her mother, aunt and grandmother become sick and eventually succumb, all at an early age.
‘Her drive, her absolute value in herself, is defined by the impact she can have during her time here – for her kids and for the underprivileged and those suffering injustices.’
And he also shared his thoughts on her hugely influential decision to make her preventative surgeries public.
‘She’s never been a person who hides,’ said the 51-year-old. ‘She’s utterly forthcoming and sincere about who she is.’
He said that she always stands by her decisions. ‘I’ll tell you this about her surgeries: Once the decision was made, she was on the operating table two weeks later.’
The two co-star in By The Sea, which as well as starring in, Angelina also wrote and directed.
Filming the strained film about an imploding marriage served as the pair’s honeymoon after their 2014 marriage.
‘We had to stay in our corners, like boxers, and not be husband and wife,’ Angelina says of their time on set.
‘It was very hard to do those scenes without Brad and I taking care of each other. Normally in between takes, you’d make sure that the other’s OK, but we had to be able to really get ugly.’
But their children, who are home schooled, snapped them out of it at the end of each day.
‘That might have been an absolute disaster. But as soon as we got home, it was bedtime stories, children’s needs and problems, the fights they’d had during the day.
‘We had to immediately snap back to something that was uniting and positive and loving.’
Source: dailymail.co.uk
