Angelina Jolie Needed 'Almost 7 Months' Of Training To Portray Famed Opera Singer
Angelina Jolie has seemingly put her all into her next role — and spent half a year in training.
The Oscar-winning actor recently wrapped filming her starring role in Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” an upcoming biopic about soprano Maria Callas, and shared Thursday ahead of the Venice International Film Festival premiere how terrifying that process really was.
“I was terribly nervous,” Jolie told the room full of reporters. “I spent almost seven months training, because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half. He demands, in a most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.”
“But my first time singing, I remember being so nervous,” she continued. “My sons were there and they helped to block the door [so] that nobody else was coming in, and I was shaky, and Pablo in his decency started me in a small room and ended me in La Scala.”
The iconic Milan opera house was inaugurated in 1778 with a performance from none other than Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer known best to modern audiences for his rivalry with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as chronicled in the 1984 film “Amadeus.”
“So he gave me time to grow,” joked Jolie. “But I was frightened to live up to [Callas].”
Callas was one of the most influential opera singers of the 20th century. The New York-born Greek was so beloved for her vocal range and dramatic interpretations that she was eventually hailed as “La Divina,” or “The Divine One.”
Larraín, who has already chronicled the lives of Princess Diana in “Spencer” and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in “Jackie,” was drawn to the project due to Callas’ colorful life, which involved the renunciation of her American citizenship, love affairs and a third act in Paris.
Callas lived largely