Angelina Jolie says she has never raised her six children expecting to grow old alongside them - a mindset she traces directly to losing her own mother young and to a gene mutation that runs through three generations of her family.
"I raise my kids almost preparing them for my absence and not as much preparing to be a grandmother," Jolie told Variety in an interview tied to her film "Couture," in which she plays a director facing a breast cancer diagnosis. "That's what happens when you consider death as a reality."
Jolie's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian and breast cancer at 56, the same disease that claimed Jolie's grandmother, Lois Bertrand, at 45 - a woman Jolie never had the chance to meet. In 2013, Jolie revealed she carries a mutated BRCA1 gene, a hereditary marker that significantly raises the risk of both cancers, and underwent a preventive double mastectomy rather than wait for a diagnosis.
"I'm already past the age when my mother was diagnosed," Jolie said. "I may struggle from almost feeling like I can't live in the moment because I feel like I have to push and rush because time's running out."
Now that her children - Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne - are mostly grown, Jolie says the dynamic has started to shift. "My kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me traveling the world, they want me to get out and do things," she said. "They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot."
