6-year-old Angelina Jolie and her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand
As a reminder that every day, really, should be Mother’s Day, here’s a video tribute, by actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie, along with her brother, James Haven, of their mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, who died from ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56.
The 2010 video — released the day before the 3-year anniversary of Bertrand’s death and authenticated by celebrity site TMZ — features Bertrand, a single-mother with then 6-year-old Jolie in matching sundresses and leis, enjoying a vacation in Hawaii. It ends with, “We miss you mom. With love, Angelina and James.”
Jolie, who has six kids of her own with actor Brad Pitt, describes Bertrand in a 2011 interview with 60 Minutes: “My mother was a full-time mother — she didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences — everything was for her children. I will never be as good of a mom as she was. But I will try my best.”
(MORE: Angelina Jolie’s Double Mastectomy: What We Know About BRCA Mutations and Breast Cancer)
Jolie publicly revealed in a NY Times op-ed today that she took preventative measures to avoid suffering the same fate as her mother by undergoing a double mastectomy.
“There is no longevity on my mother’s side of the family,” Jolie said in a 2007 Esquire interview. “My grandmother also died young, so my mother always thought it could happen to her. But she lived to see her grandchildren, lived to see both me and my brother in a nice place.”
You can check out more videos of Bertrand’s interviews and film clips on her posthumous YouTube channel, maintained by Bill Day, Bertrand’s former partner.