Angelina Jolie Opens Up About Her Real Voice, Opera & Playing Maria Callas | Vogue

Are you going to open up like a... A therapy thing. I think there should be. Like a center. I'll say this to anybody and I'll stand by it. Just skip therapy for a year and just go to opera class instead. Hello, welcome everybody. My name is Pablo and we have a very special guest in our show today. Hello, Pablo. You know, because we get the same questions everywhere and we're trying to do something a little bit different. I know that most people ask you about your relationship with opera before you made the movie. And I want to know what's your relationship with opera now? Well, you know I love opera now. I listen to it all the time. I listen to it more than anything. It's very grounding, so I put it on now to just kind of think and settle. I remember that one of the things that I think was very beautiful to me is how you brought a new angle of the character. And I think I've said this to you, which is this sense of stoicism that she had and that you brought to the screen, where did you get that from? Is that something that you found as you look to her in the interviews? Is something that happened to you when you were listening to the music? Where did you find that sense of stoicism that you brought to the character? I'm not moved by self-pity. I find it, it doesn't, I don't have an emotional reaction to it in the same way that when I see a human being doing their best to hold their head up and to get on, I find that very moving, and those are the type of people I tend to like. And I recognize that in her. I would see interviews. Some horrible things are said to her, right? Horrible questions, rude things. Even people throw things at her, right? And you see her having to hold her nerve and hold herself together and not break apart. And so I think it was something she had to do, but also something that was a little bit innate to her. There's something that you have said to me, and not just to me, to others, that after your process of learning how to sing, you think other people, like most people, should go into opera classes. Oh, I do, everybody. Why? Especially you first, because I really hadn't understood how much we hold in our bodies and how much through a lifetime we carry and it changes and how much it affects our sound. And I realized early on when I had to take that deep breath and let it all out and let my actual voice out that I wasn't. I think that's why I didn't know I was a soprano because I think I always had this like this deeper or stronger and I said I said no my voice in the end the coach said that's not your natural voice your natural voice is much higher and softer than the way you speak and so did he say why or do you know why is that I think it was my softness that I somehow along my life felt that I either wasn't safe or wasn't heard in my softer self. I don't know if other people know this about Maria Callas and her aim to put opera back to where it belonged in the beginning, how it was formed nearly 500 years ago, which is back to the people. And I think one of the aims of this movie is just like Callas wanted. We want the opera to be out there and we want it to reconnect. you also being a very known person will help to that process how does it make you feel oh well that would be a dream and because it's an art form that I really that I really love and I I value I also think it's probably why in the beginning I was hesitant sometimes when you're a public person for a long time people have different ideas of you they've seen new things it's hard to lose you in a film but so I I I would love that I it would mean so much to me and I think and you're absolutely right I think and I would say this to anybody who thinks this somehow is about opera and therefore it's not something you'll understand because you weren't raised with opera I wasn't raised with opera and felt that I would have to get this education because I wasn't I wasn't sophisticated I wasn't it was beyond me and I found it quite the opposite I found that it was so it's so deep in the human experience and and it's so for everyone I found an actress with a lot of discipline to to work the role even though it was very scary and frightening and sure and I say this because I've struggled many years with this idea of talent you know and the idea of taste you're like almost like people were born with that you know Maria Callas just like most of the great artists just sang every day of her life I trained every single day, I had a discipline, and probably she had a great voice, no doubt, but she worked it out, and you told me this. I'm a worker, I'm here to work, and people might think that behind this idea of fame or public knowledge that you could carry, there's someone that, you know, things are given to her. What is your relationship with work and to the idea of earning the things and not to be the recipient of a gift, you know? I do pride myself a worker, and it means a lot to me that you saw that and that you knew how much I was wanting to give everything and commit to this. As a creative, you want to always be growing. I'm always putting myself in a situation where I'm not the smartest person in the room or I don't understand what's happening is the way that so much creativity and so much human growth comes from being completely uncomfortable but working very hard. And I may also be at fault for never knowing how to relax, though. I may have the opposite problem. I've never been good at, like, I can't take a vacation. I think not dissimilar to Maria. We're very different people in many ways, but not dissimilar. I was working to help my mom pay bills when I was about 14. So I think that I probably have a strange sense of that I can't or I shouldn't or I don't know who I am when I'm not working. That's a whole other therapy session that we'll take another time. I remember I called you when we were preparing the movie after I went to see the eye doctor and he was like a fan of Callas, like a guy that really knew her work. And he goes and says, did you know that she had myopia? And I'm like, yeah, I've seen some pictures with glasses. You wanna see how she actually saw back then? So I sat with him and he put me these things And she could not see anything from, you know, from this distance, like, I don't know, I don't know how, like five centimeters. I don't know how many inches it is, but like nothing. So how did you approach that element of the character that is, we haven't talked about it with anyone. I think I know the answer, but I think it's interesting to talk about it, but someone that can't see. Well, one thing you don't know, and a lot of people don't know, is I'm nearsighted. So I have like this slight, slight understanding, only that I think it puts you in a place where you're a little more isolated because you're not sure of the person's expression across the room. You're not sure of the world around you in the same way that somebody who can see perfectly can. So I think it made her more isolated, more private, more misunderstood. It also really made me very sad for her because I realized when she was a little girl going to the conservatory and her mother put so much pressure on her, right? She had to be great. She had to become this opera singer. She had to be. I wonder if she even felt she was in a position to say but but mom I can't see or I can't see the conductor I'm sure she didn't tell anybody how bad it was because it would have been something that they would have seen as she's less than and she can't become yeah she had to memorize the music so perfectly because she couldn't rely on the conductor she had to memorize everything she She just had to work that much harder. So it just made me love her all the more and respect her. But it's that image. It's that image you and I both love. She's walking into the apartment. She's walking into the apartment. And that look on her face. It's actually in 77. She's walking into the apartment. It's like a paparazzi took that. And it's like she's captured so painfully. This is a good start for my following question. Yes. You're a very good interviewer. Right, right. Yeah, I love it. I don't have to talk much, so. No, but there's something interesting. We discussed the fact that, obviously, your training with the music was the best path to the character, to get there. But those are elements from the sound world that were very important. What elements from the physical world, the visual world, what images stayed with you in the preparation? I'm thinking on, obviously, Paris, her apartment, and the opera houses, Milan, Rome, Venice, imaginary around Onassis' boat in the Greek islands, Athens as she grew up, New York, Brooklyn when she was born. What is the visual content that stayed with you maybe before we started the movie and then after? What are your memories like, the images that stayed with you? I mean, so many, and really so much of it is the juxtaposition of so many different aspects of her life, right? that there's this, that it's not like there's a Maria and then there's a fake Maria or a private and a public. It's all Maria. I think the images before would have been her on stage, her in the red dress, you know, when she's just so still and all you're looking at is this stillness. I don't think I've seen anything like that. That's so extraordinary, just that stoic. That stoicism. That stoicism and that La Traviata. I think we talked about seeing her with Onassis, where she seemed free. She seemed like a girl, seemed like a woman, and thinking it must have been so nice for her to have a time in her life where she felt the wind in her hair, literally, and she just felt silly and free and not always under pressure to show, to work and work and work and just be alive and have sex and be in love. There was something about her and her dogs, and there's images of her doing, where she's in her furs, got her crazy, her bolero hat, her giant glasses, her poodles, and she's walking the streets of Paris. And I remember thinking, God, do I miss a wonderful, eccentric artist. We don't see a lot these days. There's, I consider it to be almost like an obsession because we've been together doing a lot of press and there's this continuous question about comparing your life with Maria, right? And what are the things that you might have in common? And I wonder, when you were doing the research that we gave you or the one that you found yourself, is there anything that was surprising that maybe it's not something that is the obvious thing that people could think about, but that when you were looking at it, it was like, wow, look at that. That's very similar to the way I see something, to the way I relate to the world. I remember just thinking often, I was so fortunate I had my children. Because I think without my children, she and I are very, very similar. And the thing we talked about once, and that wanting to be a girl, which is maybe sharing too much, but I think there's that, when you feel that you've had to be responsible for a lot when you're young, um you you you actually want to be able to just be like i think she just wanted to be maria like i just want to be angie i think it's very sad what what happened with um with maria and her intention to to have a children to have a family i don't know if she ever felt love like real deep i mean bruna and ferruccio i think they were loving friends but they were also employed by her and we know that her family took money from her, sued her, threatened her. We know the men in her life took advantage of her. So I don't know if she ever experienced anybody just loving her for her. I'm with you. I don't know if she was truly loved by others while she was alive. I do know that we love her. Yes. And I have been criticized by certain people, media, whatever, that say that this movie It's too reverential towards Maria. And I'm like, yeah, it is. Which also tells you what they want is maybe more gossip, more judgment. Because it is not a perfect portrait of a perfect person by any means. It is not. It's ridiculous. So I, first of all, I disagree with them. Me too, but if that were the case. Even if it was, we know that what they're looking for is like saying, I want more drama. I want more dirt. And I think that's what cheapened who she was when she was alive, you know, with those people and those reporters or those that chose. You could have had all these things from her. They could have had all these conversations with her, but then they choose to talk about certain things or see certain aspects of her, like in those final interviews. You could ask that woman anything. They could have had any kind of conversation, but they chose to just have the lowest common denominator. You know, it's a waste. That leads me to our very last question. What is it? Yes. It's not really a question. Okay. It's an invitation. What if I would stand up? It's an imaginary exercise. I would stand up and leave, and then Maria Callas herself would walk in here and sit here. Oh. So pretend I'm her. I know it's weird, but pretend I'm her. And what would you say to her? Oh, that way it makes me very emotional. I think I would just tell her, But I would tell her that I'd come to really like her as a person and really care about her. And then I'd ask her to, you know, go hang out with me for the night and stay up all night and be girls and just relax and be silly. And, yeah, I think we would have been good for each other. Thank you.