Top secret is right. Among the millions who discovered Tuesday morning that Angelina Jolie had undergone a preventative double mastectomy was her father, actor Jon Voight. Opening up to the Daily News about his daughter's bold medical decision, the Oscar-winning actor, 74, admits that he was kept out of the loop during Jolie's February-through-April process.
"My love and admiration for my daughter can't be explained in words," said the Midnight Cowboy star, also father to Jolie's brother James Haven. "I saw her two days ago with my son Jamie. We all got together for his birthday, with her and Brad [Pitt]. But I didn't know. It wasn't obvious at all."
Continued Voight, who reconciled with his famous daughter in early 2010 after years of estrangement: "I found out [Tuesday] morning. I was as surprised as anyone and deeply moved by the way she’s handled this. She's a very extraordinary person, the way she examined it and what she shared."
Indeed, a source told Us Weekly that Jolie kept the secret very close to her vest: "She discussed it with Brad and a few people in her life but very very few knew."
Voight divorced Jolie and Haven's mother Marcheline Bertrand in 1980 after nine years of marriage; Bertrand died in 2007 at age 56 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Bertrand was certainly on Jolie's mind when doctors revealed she carried a "faulty" BRCA1 gene, making her highly susceptible to breast cancer. (The star wrote that she had an 87 percent breast cancer risk and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.)
"My [younger] children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was," Jolie wrote.
