Angelina Jolie has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed after routine tests revealed that she was at heightened risk of developing ovarian cancer - the illness her mother died from aged 56.

In a moving article for the New York Times, the 39-year-old actress said she had the surgery last week as preventative measure against the disease.

"My doctors indicated I should have preventive surgery about a decade before the earliest onset of cancer in my female relatives," she writes. "My mother’s ovarian cancer was diagnosed when she was 49. I’m 39."

Angelina underwent a double mastectomy two years ago, because she had inherited the faulty BRCA1 gene, which gave her estimated 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

In the piece published this week, the mum-of-six said she was aware at the time of her mastectomy that she may have to undergo further surgery "but I felt I still had months to make the date".

However two weeks ago, she received a call from her doctor who told her that standard blood tests had revealed "a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer".

"I told myself to stay calm, to be strong"; Angelina Jolie has ovaries removed after cancer scare