Brad Pitt is hailing his fiancée Angelina Jolie as “heroic” after she revealed to the world in a New York Times oped that she had a double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer.
“Having witnessed this decision firsthand, I find Angie’s choice, as well as so many others like her, absolutely heroic. I thank our medical team for their care and focus,” the World War Z actor told The Evening Standard. “All I want for is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children. This is a happy day for our family.”
Amazingly, Jolie kept the surgery a secret, even while making high profile trips for her United Nations duties. She went to the Congo with U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague and was in London last month for the G8 Summit.
“This is a brave choice by a remarkable woman,” Hague told the Standard. “The courage it must have taken not only to go through this treatment but then to speak about it to help other women is truly inspiring. Throughout it all her humanitarian work has not missed a beat. This is a courageous decision by one of the bravest people I know. I wish her and her family the very best.”
Jolie wrote in her piece that by getting the double mastectomy, she has lowered her chance of having breast cancer to just 5 percent from 87 percent. Her mother died of cancer and she wrote that she carried the “faulty” gene BRC1.
“I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive,” she wrote about her fiancé. “So to anyone who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition. Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. We managed to find moments to laugh together. We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.”
Jolie and Pitt are raising six children together, Shiloh, Zahara, Pax Thien, Maddox and twinsKnox and Vivienne.