Photos: Angelina Jolie's aunt Debbie Martin dies of breast cancer

Angelina Jolie's aunt has died of breast cancer less than two weeks after the Hollywood actor revealed that she had undergone a double mastectomy to avoid the disease that killed her mother at 56. Debbie Martin, 61, died in a hospital in Escondido, near San Diego, California, according to her husband, Ron. She was the younger sister of Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, whose death from ovarian cancer in 2007 prompted the actor to have the surgery she described in a New York Times article this month.

Jolie revealed that she had a defective gene, BRCA1, which significantly increased her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. "Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk," she wrote.