2. Kelly Osbourne
Around the same time that Jolie explained her decision to The New York Times, Kelly Osbourne opened up to the media, saying that she had the same gene. However, Osbourne took a different path to reduce the risk of cancer. She had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
"I have gotten tested, and I do have the gene, but I'm still young enough to -- I mean, you can have the gene and never ever get it," Osbourne told ET's Nischelle Turner after a taping of The Talk, which was published in an ET article online. "It's just keeping up with the doctor, going and getting checked all the time, and being responsible to yourself."
3. Christina Applegate
Angelina Jolie isn’t the only celebrity who opted for a mastectomy. In 2008, television darling Christina Applegate took the same scary leap.
At just 36-years-old, Applegate discovered she had both early stage breast cancer and the BRCA gene. She was given two choices: radiation treatment along with regular cancer screenings, or a double mastectomy. Applegate chose the second option.
"It came on really fast. It was one of those things that I woke up and it felt so right," Applegate told Oprah Winfrey while appearing on her show. "It just seemed like, 'I don't want to have to deal with this again. I don't want to keep putting that stuff in my body. I just want to be done with this.' And I was just going to let them go.”