After admitting to grief-related weight loss earlier in the week, Angelina Jolie has spoken further about how her mother’s death earlier in the year affected her.

Marcheline Bertrand died in January after seven years of treatment for ovarian cancer and Angelina told the News of the World: “I am not an irrational or emotional person, I am only emotional when big things happen to me, like my mother’s death.”

“It was a very difficult time for me. In one way, it made me sad, but at the same time I was happy because she’d been in a lot of pain for so long. So I was happy for her because she is out of it. I had to work my way through my grief and make some sense of it.”

“I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I think you can feel an essence of the person who has passed away that lingers on. I sometimes feel I can hear my mother. I am very similar to her as a woman too so I think we continue to exist in those who we leave behind.”

In related news, Angelina has said she’s considering reconciling with her estranged father Jon Voight.

The pair haven’t spoken since Jon made comments on Access Hollywood about, what he called, Angelina’s “serious mental problems” in 2002 and she has reportedly dismissed previous attempts to bring them back together.

But now she’s told London’s Evening Standard newspaper: “”I am hoping my relationship with my father will be more private in the future. At the end of the day we both wish the best for each other and we’ll try to start communicating in some way.”