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 The announcement in a New York Times column printed on
Tuesday came nearly two years after the rights campaigner and
mother-of-six had a double mastectomy after hearing she had also
inherited a high risk of breast cancer.
Jolie, 39, said she had gone public with her decision to tell
other women about the options available to them.
"I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for
myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say,
'Mom died of ovarian cancer,'" Jolie wrote.
The procedure had triggered menopause, she added. "I will not be
able to have any more children, and I expect some physical
changes. But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because
I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to
be feared."
Jolie, who also lost her aunt and grandmother to cancer,
underwent the laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy last
week after blood tests revealed possible indicators of early
cancer.
She said doctors had told her she had a 50 percent risk of
ovarian cancer due to an inherited genetic mutation.
Husband Brad Pitt flew to her side from France hours after she
told him about the test, she wrote. "The beautiful thing about
such moments in life is that there is so much clarity. You know
what you live for and what matters. It is polarizing, and it is
peaceful," she added.
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Jolie, who won an Oscar as best supporting actress in the 1999 film
"Girl, Interrupted" based her earlier decision to undergo a double
mastectomy on news that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer.
Her announcement of that decision in a New York Times op-ed in May
2013 was widely lauded by celebrities, cancer survivors and medical
professionals for its openness.
She wrote in Tuesday's article, titled "Diary of a Surgery," that no
signs of cancer were discovered in removed tissue and that she had
has a progesterone IUD inserted to help maintain hormonal balance
and help prevent uterine cancer.
"It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain
prone to cancer," she said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about
20,000 women get ovarian cancer and about 14,500 die from it every
year in the United States.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew
Heavens)
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