Angelina Jolie says it has been stressful being the single mother of six, following her separation from Brad Pitt, but that she remains thankful that her health for now is fine.
“It’s been difficult,” the 42-year-old Oscar winner told the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph on Sunday. “I don’t enjoy being single. It’s not something I wanted. There’s nothing nice about it. It’s just hard. Sometimes maybe it appears I am pulling it all together, but really I am just trying to get through my days.”
Jolie, who has had cancer issues and recently suffered from hypertension and Bell’s palsy, added that her “health is something I have to monitor.” She said, “So much in life you just focus on how much worse it could be. And I am so happy I don’t have cancer, and that if I do get it, it will be delayed for a few years. The exchange for that peace of mind is quite good. I feel sometimes that my body has taken a hit, but I try to laugh as much as possible.”
Jolie had revealed in a May 2013 New York Times op-ed that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after discovering she carries a gene that increases the risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
She said, “The children have been amazing,” referring to sons Maddox, 16, and Pax, 13, daughters Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 11, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 9. “It’s been so moving to see how much they have helped each other and how much they have helped me. They have really come into their own and they are finding themselves and their voices. I know that they will have each other for life and it gives me great peace to know the day I pass away that they will take care of each other.”
Jolie — who directed and with Loung Ung co-adapted Ung’s memoir “First They Killed My Father,” premiering on Netflix on Sept. 15 — won a Supporting Actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted.” The star, whose films include two Lara Croft, Tomb Raider movies, “Changeling,” “Salt” and “Maleficent,” filed for divorce on Sept. 19 last year following an alleged altercation involving Pitt and one of the children on a private plane.
