Angelina Jolie has spoken about her practice of preparing her children for her eventual absence, a perspective shaped by the premature death of her own mother.
"I raise my kids almost preparing them for my absence and not as much preparing to be a grandmother," Jolie told Variety. "That’s what happens when you consider death as a reality."
Jolie, who has stated she "never lived feeling like I’m going to have a long life," explained that her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of breast and ovarian cancer at age 56. Jolie herself underwent a preventive double mastectomy in 2013 due to a mutated BRCA1 gene that significantly increases the risk of these cancers.
"She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms," Jolie wrote in a New York Times op-ed regarding her mother. "But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was."
This experience, coupled with never meeting her own grandmother, has influenced Jolie's outlook. "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," she told Variety.
Now that her children are older and approaching adulthood, Jolie noted that they encourage her to engage more with life. "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. I think they’re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn’t felt as free to do."
Her latest film, "Couture," features Jolie as a filmmaker diagnosed with breast cancer, a theme that resonates with her personal history.