The awesome reason why Angelina Jolie is looking forward to turning 50.

Image: Getty.

For some, turning 50 is a milestone that’s viewed with mixed emotions, even more so if you’re a female actress working in Hollywood.

However for Angelina Jolie, marking half a century couldn’t be more welcome – and for a very poignant reason.

Earlier this year, the actress had her ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed, just two years after undergoing a preventative double mastectomy after she discovered she had the ‘faulty’ BRCA1 gene – which sharply increases the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer – inherited from her mother and grandmother. They both passed away from ovarian cancer.

“Both of the women in my family, my mother and grandmother started dying in their 40s. I’m 40. I can’t wait to hit 50 and know I made it,” she said in a new interview with Vogue.

The 40 year old wrote about both experiences in two widely lauded op-ed pieces published in the New York Times, and her decision to go public has been attributed to helping thousands of others in greater awareness of the disease.

“It really connected me to other women. I wish my mom had been able to make those choices," she said.

"The procedures themselves were brutal. It’s hard. They are not easy surgeries. The ovaries are an easy surgery, but the hormone changes - interesting. We did joke that I had my Monday edit. Tuesday surgery. Wednesday go into menopause. Thursday come back to edit, a little funky with my steps.” (Post continues after gallery.)

The humanitarian, director and mum of six also spoke about her latest project By The Sea, a film she wrote eight years ago after the death of her mother and which she directs and stars in with her husband Brad Pitt.

Loosely based on her mother's life, the film sees the Pitts play a couple in a struggling relationship - but that doesn't mean it's a reflection of what the relationship between the couple who married last year is really like (sorry, gossip mags).

"It’s not autobiographical. Brad and I have our issues but if the characters’ were even remotely close to our problems we couldn’t have made the film," she told Vogue.

"As artists we wanted something that took us out of our comfort zones. Just being raw actors. It’s not the safest idea. But life is short.”

Did Angelina Jolie make you more aware about the risk of cancer?