Angelina Jolie reveals she had her ovaries removed to prevent cancer

Angelina Jolie
(Image credit: Eamonn M. McCormack/Stringer/Getty Images)

Angelina Jolie said in an opinion article published Tuesday at The New York Times that she had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to prevent cancer.

The surgery last week came two years after the actress underwent a preventative double mastectomy. A blood test had found that Jolie, who lost her mother, grandmother, and an aunt to cancer, had a gene mutation giving her an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

"I know my children will never have to say, 'Mom died of ovarian cancer,'" Jolie wrote.

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Harold Maass

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at TheWeek.com. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 launch of the U.S. print edition. Harold has worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, Fox News, and ABC News. For several years, he wrote a daily round-up of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two sons.