TODAYAngelina Jolie and Brad Pitt sat down in a rare interview on the Today Show, opening up about how they've maintained an incredibly strong marriage despite the obstacles they've faced.
In talking about their upcoming movie together By the Sea, the 40-year-old actress explains how entirely different the characters' relationship in the film is from their own.
"I'm counting on the audience to know that if it was close to us at all, we could never make this film," she explains to Tom Brokaw. "It's because we're actually very, very stable and these aren't our issues."
In fact, that statement becomes incredibly obvious as they begin talking about Jolie's health concerns and how that affected them as a couple. When she discovered she carried the mutation that increased her risk for breast and ovarian cancer, Pitt can't help but get choked up when recalling the overwhelming emotions that came over him.
"I was out in France, and Angie called me and I got straight on a plane to return. Seeing my wife have to be her strongest and knowing that it's the scariest news is terribly moving," he says, holding back tears. "And not being there is a horrible feeling."
At that point in time, Jolie decided to undergo a double-mastectomy and later have her ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed—something she knew would send her into early menopause.
"You never know what a reaction is—you have to just make the choices you make in life," the actress explains of her decisions. "I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me."
Pitt reciprocated her comments, adding, "There was no vanity to my wife's approach. It was mature, 'This is our life and we're gonna make the best of it.' There was a strength in that. It was just another one of those things in life that makes you tighter, and she was doing it for the kids, and she was doing it for her family so we could be together and that trumps anything and everything."
Despite going through with all the procedures and dealing with menopause, Jolie says she never once felt any less womanly, mostly due to her husband's unconditional love and support.
"I think that for as much as he speaks about my strength, he made it very, very clear to me 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 your physical body," she explains. "So I knew through my surgeries that he was on my side and that this wasn't going to be something where I was going to feel less of a woman because my husband wasn't going to let that happen."
Overall, Jolie hopes that her story and her decisions will at least inspire other people to come together and talk about these types of health issues in a new light.
"Many of us will have cancer. We will all die," she says. "And so to face these issues together and speak about them and talk about what it is to be human I think can be a beautiful thing."