Angelina Jolie on Double Mastectomy Scars

For Angelina Jolie, scars are an eternal reminder of her journey through life.

That’s why the Oscar winner doesn’t mind having a few marks on her body from her double mastectomy, which she underwent in 2013 after doctors discovered she possesses a gene that increases the risk of breast cancer.

“I’ve always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry,” she said in a recent interview with French radio station France Inter. “I’m not drawn to some perfect idea of a life that has no scars.”

In fact, the 50-year-old—who shares kids Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 19, as well as twins Knox and Vivienne, 17, with ex Brad Pitt—said the double mastectomy scars will always serve as reminders of the “choice I made to do what I could do to stay here as long as I could with my children.”