Angelina Jolie On Playing Maria Callas: “I Share Her Vulnerability More Than Anything” – Venice Film Festival
Angelina Jolie hit the Lido today, ahead of the world premiere of Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas biopic, Maria. Speaking with the Venice Film Festival press corps this afternoon, the star said that embodying the legendary opera singer gave her a “new relationship” to the term “diva.” The word “comes with a lot of negative connotations… I think (Callas) was one of hardest working people, who didn’t hurt anybody.”
Maria, a creative imagining and a psychological portrait of the eponymous legendary opera singer, takes place in the 1970s near the end of Callas’ life. It’s a story about a woman who lived from the ’20s to the ’70s, burning her voice and her life by doing what she loved.
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This is the third portrait of a famous woman as seen through Larraín’s lens, following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, both of which also premiered in Venice.
On Wednesday, Netflix snapped up U.S. rights to the film.
Larrain said he’d been “a big Maria Callas fan,” but that he was especially intrigued by the fact that there are “almost no movies about opera and opera singers.” Callas had “the greatest voice in history who had a very beautiful and difficult life.”
The filmmaker noted that while “90% of the stories she sang end with death on the stage,” he didn’t set out to make a “dark movie.” Rather, one “more about a woman who spent her life singing for others, taking care of others, worrying about relationships… Now she’s ready to take care of herself and find her own destiny.”
He added, “Of course, this movie wouldn’t exist without Angelina.”
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Asked how she related to Callas beautiful but tragic journey, Jolie smiled, “Well, there’s a lot I won’t say in this room that you probably know or assume.” She continued, “I think the way I related to her was probably the part of her that is extremely soft and doesn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she was, as emotionally open as she truly was… I share her vulnerability more than anything.”
While there’s already awards buzz surrounding Jolie, she told the press that the bar for her to know “if I did good enough are the Maria fans and those who love opera. My fear would be to disappoint them… I didn’t want to do a disservice to this woman.”
Jolie, who says she never sang in public before Maria, trained for seven months and was “terribly nervous.” The first time she sang on set, her sons “blocked the door so that no one else could come in because I was so nervous.” She credited Larrain who “in his decency, started me in a small room and ended me in La Scala.”
She noted when she was younger she was into punk, “I loved all music, but I probably listened to The Clash more than most. As I’ve gotten older, classical music, opera — I still love the same music as when I was young… When you’ve felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love… at a certain point there is only certain sounds that can match that feeling. To me, the immensity of feeling encapsulated in sounds of opera — there’s nothing like it.”
Oscar nominee Steven Knight (Spencer) wrote the script; Juan de Dios Larraín, Lorenzo Mieli and Jonas Dornbach produce. The project hails from The Apartment, a Fremantle Company, as well as Fabula, Komplizen and Fremantle. Others in the cast include Oscar nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino and Valeria Golino.
Following its Venice premiere, Maria will go on to screen at the New York Film Festival.
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