These days, Angelina Jolie is primarily interested in rediscovering what she feels she has lost along the way: parts of herself that, amid personal trials, motherhood, and transformations, have remained in the shadows for years.
“Life has broken me a little,” said the Oscar winner in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment. “I have to live again. Be free again.” This reflection accompanies the release of Couture, a new film directed by Alice Winocour, in which Jolie stars as Maxine Walker, an American filmmaker who is diagnosed with breast cancer while in Paris on business. As Maxine Walker, Jolie is forced to confront not only her illness but also the choices and identity she has built over the years.
If today, at 51, the actress feels she is rediscovering herself, the credit goes above all to her daughters, Shiloh, Zahara, and Vivienne: “They speak to me as young women, and I see what I want for them,” she said. “I see what I don’t want them to lose and what I want them to hold on to. And in a way, this is reminding me of what I might have lost myself.”
Along with her daughters, Jolie is mother to three sons: Maddox, Pax, and Knox. But Jolie says it is her daughters, in particular, who are offering her a new perspective on her own identity. “I think, in some way, they’re bringing me back to my old self. I think they kind of want me now to not just be ‘Mom.’ There’s a different room for me to be that woman again, that’s not just a mom.”
This connection also stems from very personal reasons. In 2013, Angelina Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy after discovering she was a carrier of the BRCA1 genetic mutation. This decision was also influenced by her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died in 2007 from breast and ovarian cancer.
The theme that surprised Jolie most while working on Couture was the protagonist’s relationship with love and her own femininity. She notes that stories about women’s cancer often end up focusing exclusively on the disease, forgetting the rest of the person. “So often we see, when there’s a project that’s dealing with a woman’s cancer, it’s not often where her sexuality post-diagnosis is celebrated,” she told Yahoo Entertainment. For her, the most important message is elsewhere: to continue living life to the fullest, without letting the disease define every aspect of one’s existence. “This was a part of continuing to live all aspects, to live to your last breath, right? And not to start living only as a patient.”
