"I actually love being in menopause," she told The Daily Telegraph on Sunday.

"I haven't had a terrible reaction to it, so I'm very fortunate. I feel older, and I feel settled being older.

"I feel happy that I've grown up. I don't want to be young again."

The 40-year-old mother of six decided to have the surgery in March after also undergoing a preventive double mastectomy in 2013. Jolie told The New York Times at the time that she decided to take action after she tested positive for the mutated BRCA1 gene, with her doctors estimating that she had an "87 per cent risk of breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer".

Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died at the age of 56 in 2007 after battling breast and ovarian cancer for almost a decade and she explained that she didn't want her children to experience the same.

Despite the change to her body, the writer, director and actress of new film By the Sea, which also stars her husband, Brad Pitt, opened up to Jenny Cooney Carillo for The Sydney Morning Herald earlier this month on why she decided to keep a topless scene in the movie.

"I didn't want to change anything, but there was a bathtub scene and I did have a thought that maybe I didn't need to show myself," she says.

"But then I decided that I would absolutely do it as written for that reason – because it's important not to hide, and to let other women know that you can still have your breasts. They feel a little different, but you can still feel like a woman."

By the Sea opens on November 26.