Angelina Jolie spoke emotionally about her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. The actress, 50, reflected on her mother’s battle with cancer, which ended with Bertrand’s death in 2007.

During a Q&A session for her new film, "Couture," an audience member who had recently lost a friend to cancer asked Jolie and her co-stars for their message of hope for those grieving. Jolie expressed her condolences, saying, "I’m very sorry for your loss," as she became visibly emotional.

After regaining her composure, Jolie shared a memory of her mother. "I think I will say that one thing I remember my mother saying when she had cancer, she said to me once, we had had a dinner and people were asking her how she was feeling and she said, ‘All anybody ever asks me about is cancer,'" Jolie recalled.

She encouraged the audience to consider the whole person when someone is facing illness. "So I would say, if you know someone who is going through something, ask them about everything else in their life as well, you know? They’re a whole person and they’re still living," she said.

Bertrand was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1999 and later with breast cancer. She passed away in January 2007 at the age of 56. Six years after her mother’s death, Jolie underwent a double mastectomy after discovering she carried a BRCA1 gene mutation, which significantly increased her risk of breast cancer.

In a 2013 op-ed for the New York Times, Jolie explained her decision to take preventive measures, stating, "I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could." In a subsequent essay in 2020, she described the impact of her mother’s death, comparing it to having "someone rip away a protective blanket."

Jolie noted, "When I look back to that time, I can see how much her death changed me. It was not sudden, but so much shifted inside."

Bertrand was married to actor Jon Voight from 1971 until their separation in 1976. They had two children together, Jolie and her brother, James Haven, 52.

During the Q&A, writer and director Alice Winocour mentioned that Jolie found a personal connection to the film due to her family history with cancer. "She also had a connection in her flesh to this story since she underwent a double mastectomy to escape her family fate," Winocour said.

In "Couture," Jolie portrays Maxine Walker, an American film director navigating a divorce and raising a teenage daughter while facing a serious medical diagnosis.