Angelina Jolie talks 'Maria'

Now to Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie, generating Oscar buzz once again in her new role as Maria Callas, one of the world's greatest opera singers. And I had the chance to sit down with Angelina to hear all about how she brought this larger-than-life personality to the screen. If you don't know her name, you certainly know her voice. Legendary opera singer Maria Callas takes center stage in a new film, Maria, starring Oscar winner Angelina Jolie as the tragic prima donna. I will sing when I am ready to sing. And your performance, amazing. It's been called spellbinding. Thank you. Maria explores the divas' final days living in Paris, struggling to stage a comeback while reflecting on her glamorous and tumultuous life in the public eye. Her voice, her love life, her every move under constant scrutiny. Our viewers want to know what the hell happened to you. A lot of times it's hard to watch because you do see a human in her being criticized like that, but it's something that you're familiar with as a celebrity. So were you able to take some of your personal experience that you may have had and use it in the portrayal of Maria? Sure. I mean, probably a lot that I wouldn't say on morning television. There's obvious things that people would tie our lives and see we have in common, but I think it's more the, the, the, how hard she is in herself with her work, sometimes seen as strong, but actually very vulnerable and human. I certainly am. I think there's many things. I think we would have been friends. Think you would have been, get along really well. She might have hated me at first. I think it would have grown on her. What do you want to sing? You learned to sing opera. I did. I thought it was going to be a little more fake singing. I thought it was going to be like movie singing. And then I very quickly realized that you can't fake sing opera, which was still terrified, still just. Terrified of you? Yeah. Yeah. Because they, they, they mixed your voices together. So you actually really are singing. Yeah. Was that a little scary when you're on set and you know, these moments are coming? Oh my God. You just, the first day I was a, I was an absolute lunatic because I have her in my ear. So I can make sure that I'm singing technically the same, same way she is. But the only thing that can be heard on set is me. Wow. Somebody said to me, they said, so I don't mean to offend you, but is it mostly you when it's like her older singing? And I said, that doesn't offend me that I could be a poor Maria, as long as you actually call it singing. And you say opera lessons are like therapy. How so? We all don't realize that different things that happen to us in our life, and I've been through many things. They, we hold them in our body. Everything is just locked somewhere to help us keep going. And so to really sing and sing very fully, you have to unlock all of that. Wow. My first lesson, I took a deep breath and just cried and then left. It makes sense though. It actually makes me want to sign up for opera lessons. Listen, with your physicality, I think that the athleticism, I think you'd love it. I can tell you, I did love it. Would you encourage your producers to make sure that's a part of the show? You know what? I will tell you, if you say that, you say that, they'll make me do it. I just want you to know that. Perhaps we could speak of your life away from the stage. There is no life away from the stage. In the film The Other Lime, she said, there is no life away from the stage. Is there anything in your life that compares to her love of singing? My motherhood. Yeah. Kids. Yeah. Yeah. It's my, it's my happiness. It's, you can take everything else away from me. I could, nothing else matters. Yeah. And you said that your boys, Maddox and Pax, they work on the film. They got the bug for the business? None of my children want to be in front of the camera. It's time. They're quite private. Shiloh's extremely private. They weren't born with privacy, right? So I hope they can have that as they grow up. So we'll see. But yeah, my boys were on set, which was amazing. And all of my children suffered through my early opera singing in the house before I got kind of good, which was a nightmare. Well, it wasn't a nightmare talking to her. It was complete pleasure. And the movie is incredible. And I hope everybody takes their time to go down and see it. Maria will be at Select Theatres next Wednesday and streams on Netflix starting December the 11th.