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Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie on a faulty BRCA1 gene and the surgery she chose

In May 2013 Angelina Jolie wrote a newspaper article about her own health. She said she carries a faulty version of a gene called BRCA1, which sharply raises the risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and that she had decided to have a preventive double mastectomy. She wrote that her doctors had estimated her own risk at 87 per cent for breast cancer and 50 per cent for ovarian cancer, and she was careful to add that the risk is different for every woman. Once she knew that was her reality, she wrote, she decided to be proactive and reduce the risk as far as she could, starting with her breasts because her risk there was the higher of the two. She described a course of surgery that ran over three months and finished on 27 April 2013, and said she had been able to keep it private and carry on with her work while it happened. She wrote that she did not feel any less of a woman, that her children could see her small scars and nothing that made them uncomfortable, and that her estimated chance of developing breast cancer had dropped to under 5 per cent. Her reason for writing, she said, was that other women might benefit from her experience. She encouraged every woman, and particularly anyone with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out good information and medical experts and to make her own informed choices. Twelve years later she returned to it. In an interview published by TIME France in December 2025 she showed the scars from that surgery publicly for the first time, and said she shares them with many women she loves and is always moved when other women share theirs. Asked whether BRCA testing should be offered to every woman, she said each woman should be able to decide her own path and have the information she needs to choose, that genetic testing and screening should be available and affordable for women with clear risk factors or a significant family history, and that access to screening and care should depend neither on money nor on where someone lives. Nothing here is medical advice. An altered gene is not a diagnosis, and Breast Cancer Now is clear that it does not mean someone will definitely develop cancer. If breast or ovarian cancer runs in your family, or you have noticed a change you are worried about, see a GP.

• BRCA1 gene change