Angelina Jolie bursts into tears at ‘Maria’ premiere — trained 7 months to be an opera singer
Jolie was feeling joie de vivre.
On Thursday, Angelina Jolie got overcome with emotion during the Venice Film Festival, after her movie “Maria” got an 8-minute standing ovation.
The Oscar-winning actress, 49, wiped away tears as the crowd applauded her.
In “Maria,” directed by Pablo Larraín, Jolie stars as the late opera singer Maria Callas.
Per a press release, the movie tells the “tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris.”
According to Variety, Jolie said she spent seven months learning how to sing opera.
“Everybody here knows, I was terribly nervous,” she said at a press conference. “I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half. He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.”
“I had not sung in public before,” she added, noting she was “shaky” the first time she did it.
Maria Callas was a New York City born Greek soprano who was often referred to as the world’s greatest diva.
During her dramatic and troubled life, she had a rivalry with fellow singer Renata Tebaldi, near-sightedness that caused her to be nearly blind when she performed onstage, an affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis — who eventually left her for Jacqueline Kennedy — various scandals and bouts of negative press, and a dramatic mid-career weight loss that impacted her voice.
She also died young of a heart attack at age 53 in 1977.
“There’s a lot I won’t say in this room that you probably know and assume,” Jolie said at the press conference. “I related to the part of her that is extremely soft and didn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she truly was and as emotionally open as she truly was. I think I share her vulnerability more than anything.”
About how Callas was referred to as a “diva,” Jolie said, “I think it’s often come with a lot of negative connotations. I think I’ve relearned that word through Maria and I have a new relationship to it. I think it is often other people’s perceptions of a woman that defines who she is and what she intended.”
Jolie called playing the singer the “therapy I didn’t realize I needed.”
“I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out,” she said, per the Hollywood Reporter. “So the challenge wasn’t the technical, it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.”
Viewers who attended the event remarked about the movie’s reception.
“Angelina Jolie’s 8-minute standing ovation at #Venezia81 for ‘Maria’ is the most rapturous applause I’ve seen at the festival since Brendan Fraser launched his Oscar campaign for ‘The Whale’ here two years ago,” Variety’s Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Jolie told People in 2022, “I take very seriously the responsibility to Maria’s life and legacy. I will give all I can to meet the challenge. Pablo Larraín is a director I have long admired. To be allowed the chance to tell more of Maria’s story with him, and with a script by Steven Knight, is a dream.”
Jolie has been more sporadic about her acting in recent years. “Maria” marks the “Girl, Interrupted” star’s first role in front of the camera in four years. Her last role in front of the camera was in the poorly reviewed 2021 superhero movie “Eternals.”
Jolie has been focused on her humanitarian work, directing and producing — she and her daughter Vivienne, 16, recently produced the buzzy Broadway play, “The Outsiders.” And, she’s been in a long and messy divorce battle with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt.
Netflix has the rights to “Maria,” but a premiere date hasn’t been announced yet.
