Angelina Jolie on feeling “like an older woman” – and how that affects her acting
Angelina Jolie has opened up about how she “feels like an older woman” now and how that affects her acting.
The actor was speaking in a new interview about her forthcoming biopic Maria, which sees her play opera singer Maria Callas during her final days in 1970s Paris.
She told IndieWire: “I’m 49. I do feel like an older woman now and I embrace that. When I was younger, there were certain pieces of music and certain sounds that matched what I was feeling: I was falling in love, or I was curious about this, or whatever I was going through.
“There is nothing that meets what you’re feeling like opera. [Some pieces] are so beautiful, so full of hope and so full of yearning. Opera is bigger. It is bigger than we allow ourselves to feel in every moment.”
Jolie went through extensive training to play the opera singer, with director Pablo Larraín previously saying: “She had to train for a long time. She trained for over seven months. There’s breathing, there’s posture, there’s accent.
“She sang in Italian and French, but mostly Italian. There’s what in music is called the pitch, which is the capacity to reach each note and follow the melody, and that was very challenging for her.”
Maria premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, receiving an eight-minute standing ovation that sparked an emotional reaction from Jolie. The actor also recently spoke about how she stopped singing because an ex-partner criticised her voice.
The film is the third in Larraín’s series of recent biopics focused on famous women who’ve faced challenging times while in the public eye. The previous two were 2016’s Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, and 2021’s Spencer, with Kristen Stewart playing Princess Diana.
Maria recently received a three star review from NME, which said: “Angelina Jolie may capture Maria Callas’ fragility and stoicism, but the third film in Pablo Larraín’s ‘Great Women’ trilogy is tonally unsure of itself.”
Maria will be released in UK and US cinemas on January 10, 2025.
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Damian Jones
NME
