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

Are you going to open a, 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 interviews?

Is it 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 there's 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'm...

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 deeper or stronger...

And I said, I said, no, my voice in the...

And the coach said, that's not your natural voice.

Your natural voice is much higher and softer than the way you speak.

And so...

And 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 a lot of 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 you that process.

How does it make you feel?

Oh, well, that would be a dream because it's an art form that I really...

I think it's real.

...that I really love and 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 would love that.

It would mean so much to me.

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 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 it's so for everyone.

I found an actress with a lot of discipline to work the role even though it was very scary and frightening, I'm sure.

And I say this because I've struggled for many years with this idea of talent and the idea of taste.

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 and trained every single day and 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 in 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 will 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 callous, like a guy that really knew her work and he goes and says, did you know that she had myopia?

I'm like, yeah, I've seen some pictures with glasses.

You want to 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, like five centimeters.

I don't know how many inches 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 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, yeah.

She had to memorize the music so perfectly because she couldn't rely on the conductor.

She had to memorize everything.

She had to,

she just had to be that, work that much harder.

So it just made me love her all the more and respect her, but I, it's that image.

It's that image you and I both love.

When she's walking into the apartment.

When she's walking into the apartment and that look on her face.

But it's actually in 77.

She's walking into the apartment like a paparazzi took that.

and it's like, she's captured it so,

so painful.

This is a good start for my following question.

Yes.

You're a very good interviewer.

Right, right.

I love it.

I don't have to talk much.

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 you 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

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.

Yeah, stoicism.

That stoicism.

Yeah, that stoicism.

And that to me is the traviata.

I think we talked about seeing her with Onassis where she seemed free.

She seemed like a girl.

She 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 fur she's 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.

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 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 was like wow look at that that's very similar to the way I see something to the way I relate to the work.

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 in 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

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 happened with Maria and her intention 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 is 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 at all at all

so I first of all I disagree with them

me too but 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 that shows 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 comment and you know it's a waste

that leads me to that leads me to our very last question what is it yes it's not even 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

and that always makes me very emotional I think I would just tell her

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 I think we would have been good for each other

thank you thank you