Brad Pitt comforts his wife 'throughout ordeal'

Angelina Jolie fighting early menopause after prophylactic surgeries to prevent cancer

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt

Actress Angelina Jolie, who recently had surgeries to ward off breast and ovarian cancer, is fighting early menopause as a result.

According to the Daily Dish, the 40-year-old told broadcaster Tom Brokaw that her 51-year-old husband, actor Brad Pitt, has comforted her "throughout the ordeal" and had made it clear "the surgeries wouldn't take anything away from the woman he fell in love with."

Jolie said he'd also indicated "that what he loved, and what was a woman to him, was somebody who was smart, and capable, and cared about her family. It's not about the physical body."

She knew throughout the surgeries, she elaborated, "that he was on my side and this wasn't something where I was gong to feel less of a woman — because my husband wasn't gonna let that happen."  

Jolie had her ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed in March, as a preventative measure, after doctors had found what might be early signs of ovarian cancer.

In 2013, the superstar had a prophylactic double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery after learning she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation that heightened her risk of developing breast cancer to about 87 percent. 

Her mom, Marcia Lynne "Marcheline" Bertrand, wife of actor Jon Voight, had died of ovarian cancer in 2007, at age 56, after an eight-year battle.

Rose Barlow, executive director of Zero Breast Cancer, a Marin County nonprofit dedicated "to prevention and finding the causes of breast cancer," has commented that "removing Fallopian tubes and ovaries not only significantly reduces the risk of those organs becoming diseased but also substantially reduces BRCA carriers' breast cancer rates."

Dish reported that Jolie told Brokaw in the joint interview on the "Today" show that "I knew the breast would be a bigger surgery and physically changing. The ovaries is more [about] your hormones changing and your emotions changing, but it's different — you feel different."

Pitt, praising his wife's lack of vanity, noted that the surgeries and aftermath together became "another one of those things in life that makes you tighter."

He added that "she was doing it for the kids, and she was doing it for her family, so [that] trumped everything and anything."

What's involved in being a male caregiver? "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer" provides a detailed study of the role's ups and downs.