Angelina Jolie reveals Bell's palsy diagnosis in Vanity Fair

LOS ANGELES, California -- Angelina Jolie says she developed high blood pressure and Bell's palsy last year.

The actress-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 preventative double mastectomy after learning that she carries the gene that made it extremely likely that she would get breast cancer. She had her ovaries removed two years later.

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 says they care for each other and for their family and are "both working toward the same goal."

Jolie says that when she was growing up, she often worried about her mother, and 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 says her closest friend has been Loung Ung, whose 2000 memoir "First They Killed My Father" is the basis for Jolie's latest film. The women met in 2002 when Jolie was on her first mission for the United Nations' refugee outreach.

Jolie's adaptation of Ung's memoir about the Khmer Rouge genocide that claimed her parents and siblings will premiere on Netflix later this year.

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