Jolie reveals Bell’s palsy diagnosis in Vanity Fair

LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie says she developed high blood pressure and Bell’s palsy last year.

The actor-director tells Vanity Fair that she credits acupuncture for her full recovery from the paralysis, which was caused by nerve damage and led one side of her face to droop.

Jolie has been open about her health challenges in the past. She wrote in the New York Times about her 2013 decision to have a preventive double mastectomy after learning that she carries the gene that made it extremely likely that she would get breast cancer. She later had her ovaries removed.

Jolie also opens up about her divorce from Brad Pitt in the magazine’s September cover story, which was released online Wednesday. Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016.

She said they care for each other and for their family and are “working toward the same goal.”

Jolie said that when she was growing up, she often worried about her mother. She doesn’t want her children to worry about her.

“I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them,” she said. “They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.”

Jolie’s upcoming Netflix film is based on Loung Ung’s 2000 memoir, First They Killed My Father, about the Khmer Rouge genocide.