Angelina Jolie is riding high after her latest film, Maria, a biopic about opera singer Maria Callas, received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. In a recent interview with Hollywood Reporter, Jolie opened up about her experience making the film and her struggles with singing. The actress shared that a past partner had once criticised her singing, which made her doubt her ability ever since. However, Maria overcame her past insecurities and dedicated her time to regaining her confidence and improving her singing.
She said, “I had somebody in my life who was not kind to me about singing. It was a relationship I was in. And so I just assumed I couldn’t really sing. I’d been to theater school, so it was weird that it even had an effect on me. I just kind of adapted to this person’s opinion. So it took me getting past a lot of things to start singing.”
Talking about what went behind making Maria, Angelina Jolie acknowledged that she was nervous, and practised day and night as she didn’t want to let down the crew.
“I was very, very shy stepping through this whole process. The thing with singing opera is, you have to be loud. God knows how many lozenges I had, and I was rehearsing all night, all morning. I was very nervous to begin. I didn’t want to disappoint the crew. We were in a theater or church in Greece. I thought, ‘Oh, who’s outside? Can they hear me on the street?’ We would get through that, and then it would be, ‘OK, now you have to have a few more crewmembers for the wider shot, now the audience has to start to come in.” And it grew and grew and grew until we were at La Scala (opera house in Milan),” Angelina said.
Angelina explained that performing at La Scala was the key moment and required the full support of the crew and audience. She felt excited and nervous because it was a big challenge for her. She realised she had to fully commit to the performance. For the finale performance, she focused on expressing deep emotions of pain and madness that were required for her character.
Apart from Angelina Jolie, Maria also stars Alba Rohrwacher, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Haluk Bilginer, Pierfrancesco Favino, Valeria Golino and Alessandro Bressanello.
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