Angelina Jolie recently underwent a double mastectomy after genetic tests determined the actress faced a high probability of developing breast cancer.

The Girl, Interrupted Oscar-winner revealed the news in a New York Times column published Tuesday titled "My Medical Choice," saying that she wanted to avoid the same fate as her mother, who died at age 56 after battling the ovarian cancer for nearly a decade.

"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made," Jolie wrote in the essay. "My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer."

The 37-year-old actress has six children, and said they have sometimes asked whether she might also end up with the illness that took their grandmother, Marcheline Bertrand, in 2007. "I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a ‘faulty’ gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer," Jolie wrote.

Source: Press Release