Angelina Jolie Opens Up About ‘Maria,’ Her Operatic Life and Her Bold Return

Angelina Jolie enters her mahogany-paneled dining room in Los Feliz in a gauzy white sundress and slides, carrying a pot of herbal tea, three large dogs trailing behind her. It’s mid-August, and Jolie is about to do something she hasn’t done in years—travel to a bunch of film festivals to promote her movies. Maria, the Pablo Larraín biopic in which she plays opera’s defining diva, Maria Callas, is set to premiere in Venice, Telluride and New York; Without Blood, the war drama she wrote and directed from Alessandro Baricco’s 2002 novel, will be at the Toronto Film Festival, where she’ll be honored with a tribute award Sept. 8. Netflix will release Maria in the U.S., Without Blood is seeking a distributor, and both films mark a return to the prestige movie business for Jolie, 49, after years of focusing primarily on being a mother to her six children, who now range in age from 16 to 23. Her last film as a director was 2017’s First They Killed My Father and most recent as an actor was the 2021 Marvel movie Eternals.

The film projects are personal in ways that are almost uncomfortable to discuss, with Maria — for which Jolie spent more than six months learning to sing, breathe and walk like the mercurial soprano — a portrait of an icon imprisoned by her own image. The movie is set in Paris in 1977, in the final days of Callas’ life, when she is trying to sing again after years away from a stage, for a public that had booed her when they didn’t like the sound of her voice and branded her a “tigress” for her temperament. Larraín says that, like Callas, “Angelina has an enormous amount of mystery. I thought she could play this woman who is looking to find her own identity.” 

Without Blood, which stars Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir as two people linked by a traumatic event in their youth, is a return to a subject Jolie repeatedly mines as a filmmaker: the impact of conflict (in this case, one that is never specified). It’s a subject of intense interest to her as a mother and an advocate who has traveled to refugee camps and war zones.

Jolie’s home is a lushly landscaped beaux arts mansion built for Cecil B. DeMille that she bought after her 2016 separation from Brad Pitt in a highly contentious, headline-fueling divorce that is still ongoing. A towering tree house in the yard is a sign of the family she has raised within its wrought-iron gates. She built the tree house too high, she says, because “I’ve never been afraid of heights.”

Having now made two films so intimate to her own experiences, Jolie is figuring out how she wants to talk about them. She declines to discuss Pitt, or talk about 20-year-old son Pax’s recent e-bike accident, other than to say he is recovering. Over the course of the long afternoon, while her dogs snore softly at her feet, the actress will open up with bracing candor around some subjects — like the quite literal rediscovery of her own voice — and draw firm boundaries around others. In the old Hollywood, Jolie says, “You could have this messy private process and the work spoke. Now, the audience’s relationship is different. I’m trying to get used to what to share.”

You have a packed schedule heading off to the festivals. Having finished these two films, are you able to take in the moment?

I am often not. I was an artist early to just help my mom pay bills. I’ve had times where I’ve loved being an artist, and I’ve had times where I felt very, very far away from being comfortable in the business. I’m hoping to be able to have a new relationship with it. 

What brought you to Maria Callas’ story?

Just give me a moment, because this is my first time talking about her. I kind of stepped away. It was so intense and then I stepped away and I haven’t sung or talked about her since. Which doesn’t always happen to me, but this one really kind of took me. I’m sure there’s a lot that will be read into it of our overlaps as women, but the one that’s maybe not the most obvious is I’m not sure how comfortable we both are with being public. And there was a pressure behind the working that wasn’t just the joy of the work.

And yet I do love to create, she does love to sing, but sometimes there are all these other things that take that joy away and change the experience of that. It was quite hard, what she went through. People were quite aggressive when she wasn’t able to be what they wanted her to be. They were very unkind, and she carried a lot of trauma and she worked very, very hard. I just began to really care about her and wanted that aspect of the story to be told.

In the beginning, [singing] was just survival for her. “This is what you should do to keep [the family] safe or make us money. This is what we want of you and what we expect of you.” Her approach to her music is, she said, that you find the piece of work and you just study and study and study, and you do it exactly as the composer wrote it. You add nothing. You don’t feel in it. You do the work with precision as you’re told, and then you breathe life into it and find it.

How does that compare to how you prepare as an actor?

I don’t know what it is that I do. I used to joke that I started flying lessons when I felt like I needed a practical skill because my skill was just being emotional. That was before I directed, but it was kind of like, “What do I do?” For me, if somebody laughs or relates, then it feels like a way of communicating with other people. And I think she experienced that, too. I think that’s why it hurt her so much when she was shut out and attacked.

In the first scene where Maria is rehearsing with the piano player after not performing for so many years, you’re about to open your mouth to start singing and a remarkable, dark look crosses your face. What is it that you were thinking in that moment?

Do you want to know all my private secrets?

Is that a private secret?

I’m making her pain personal to me, and that is certainly very private. It took many months of singing classes. Months of just getting the singing down and then the Italian classes and then the voice and doing all these things like her. You try to be precise. I would recommend almost every human being take an opera class. To exist and never have sung with your full body as loud as you could possibly sing — it’s something I think we should all feel. It’s scary, and it is rarely asked of us. It’s rarely asked of us in life to be all that we can be or feel all that we feel.

Quite the contrary. We’re told to tamp it down all day long.

Exactly. My first class, I cried. I was sad, I was scared. It was a strange physical body reaction. I stood there, and [the instructor] said, “OK, just be in your body. Take a deep breath, let it all out and just open your mouth and just let that sound come from the inside.” And that’s when I became really emotional. You discover how much we lock our pain in our bodies. Our voice gets tight, our shoulders go high, we get stomach aches, we do all these things, and it’s a protection for us. The hardest thing was feeling again and breathing again and opening again in the way that this film required that I had really not done for quite a while. So maybe what you saw on my face was the feeling. To have to feel everything, what she had to do on that stage … it requires your whole heart, body and mind, opera. And you can’t do it halfway.

You aren’t really a halfway person. There is some parallel with you and Maria Callas there. Have you always been someone who doesn’t just dip your toe in the pool? You dive in.

I think my failure is, I don’t know how to do the other. I really don’t. And many times I wish I did. I wish I knew how to be still and calm. I’m propelled forward constantly, and it’s not always the best feeling. For better or for worse, I’m a very deeply feeling person and kind of a raw nerve. So when I feel something deeply, I jump. I feel alive or I connect to something true inside myself. I think we all have times in our life where we’re really in tune with who we really are. And we all know those times. And usually if we listen to ourselves in those times, our path gets clearer and clearer. And when we make decisions when we are in fear or being pressured, we take a very different path. And it can be very destructive.

What was it like shooting at La Scala, the opera house located in Milan?

It was an out-of-body experience because I don’t sing. I had somebody in my life who was not kind to me about singing. It was a relationship I was in. And so I just assumed I couldn’t really sing. I’d been to theater school, so it was weird that it even had an effect on me. I just kind of adapted to this person’s opinion. So it took me getting past a lot of things to start singing. And discovering also that I was a soprano. I thought I had a low voice my whole life. I was explaining [to the singing instructor] that my voice is deeper, and he said, “No, you’re actually a soprano.” And probably something happened. Your voice changes when you go through different things in your life. So that was a shock. That was very strange.

So learning to sing and to enjoy singing, I was very, very shy stepping through this whole process. Pablo [Larraín] started the shoot with the super close-up that opens the film, because we could clear the room. My boys [sons Maddox and Pax] were there, but there was hardly anybody in there because the thing with singing opera is, you have to be loud. God knows how many lozenges I had, and I was rehearsing all night, all morning. I was very nervous to begin. I didn’t want to disappoint the crew. We were in a theater or church in Greece. I thought, “Oh, who’s outside? Can they hear me on the street?” We would get through that, and then it would be, “OK, now you have to have a few more crewmembers for the wider shot, now the audience has to start to come in.” And it grew and grew and grew until we were at La Scala. La Scala was the one everything was building toward. That was going to require the whole crew, the entire audience. It was so beyond my comfort zone that I was giddy. There was nothing else to do except to jump, to just fully jump. The final layer on that particular performance was what I am comfortable with, the emotional performance of her pain and her madness.

Do you have a way of shaking that off at the end of the workday — that stress or intensity?

I’ve been a parent for 23 years. The most beautiful thing about being a parent is that you are not the center of your life. So you are leaving set, focused on something for someone. That’s your real life. Your real world. And that always is the majority of who you are.

I have never had a set where my family is not allowed to be there because I’m focusing — I’m not that person. You can climb all over me or visit. It really meant a lot that my boys were with me on Maria. When I would have really heavy times, they would come over and just give me a hug or a cup of tea. That was probably one of the more intense things was that —usually when I’m expressing that much pain, it’s not in front of my children. You really try to hide from your children how much pain and sadness you carry. And so for them to be with you when you’re expressing it at such a level, I think it was the first time they ever heard me cry like that. That’s usually for the shower.

Maddox and Pax were working on the crew in some capacity, weren’t they?

Right. Mad and Pax were on this one. Doing AD [assistant directing] work. They’ve done that quite a few times, and I think that’s good for them. Pax tends to do stills and he gets brought in, and Pablo was wonderful and recognized that he was good at it.

Why had you waited so long since you last acted or directed?

I needed to be home more with my kids.

And what made you feel ready to return to work?

They’re a bit older, getting more independent. I’m less needed and so able to go away for different periods of time. And they’re old enough to join me at work. It’s a new season in our lives. I’m very excited for them to be coming into their own more and more every day.

What was it that drew you to the book Without Blood?

I love writers who understand the complexities of human beings and don’t try to explain them or wrap them up in a nice little bow, which may be what some people will have a hard time with in this film, because it doesn’t fully answer everything. But part of what conflict does to people and how damaging conflict is, especially to children, is that it bleeds into all aspects of your life. And you see how it’s affected both of these people. 

Most of my films are what would be considered war films or films about conflict and war and often history. The first film I did [as a director, 2011’s In the Land of Blood and Honey], I wrote trying to understand the war in Yugoslavia. A lot of people in that particular conflict were friends and lovers and neighbors, and then they would come head-to-head and become enemies and be divided. And so I wrote a story with what would happen if, in the beginning, these people have every chance of being happy and in love and having a family and all. And in the end, one kills the other. How does this happen? [Without Blood] in a way is a final chapter. I’ve been through the wars. I’ve been through Louis Zamperini in a prison camp [in 2014’s Unbroken]. I’ve been through a child at war when it’s not an outside enemy, but an enemy in your own country [2017’s First They Killed My Father]. 

Why is conflict a subject that you return to?

I’ve spent a lot of time in conflict zones, and I suppose it’s where I have seen the best of humanity and the absolute worst. I never intended to make films about war, but I just spent many years with people displaced from war and continue to work with them, and I have my home in Cambodia. My neighbors have been through war and many of my closest friends. I suppose it’s just a large part of what it is to be human, to understand why we do this to each other and how we get through it. I’ve never had to experience war or lose somebody through armed conflict. But I have people I care very deeply about who have. I’ve seen people who have nothing give everything. And I’ve seen people who have everything do nothing.

It’s not always about why these horrible things happen. It really is a lot about how people get through them. And the kind of people I love and admire most in the world are the people who keep their grace after all of the harm done to them. I think I find those people the most moving, and I admire them.

This film is a non-specific place, right? A non-specific war?

That was intentional. The writer wrote it to say, this could be anywhere. OK, now [the war] is all over and here we sit and did it add up to anything? Did it change the world? Was there a winner? What has it done to our lives?

How did you approach writing the adaptation?

I tried to stick really close to the book. So much so that the writer actually said to me, “You’re never going to get this made. They will try to force you to change the end. They will try to force you to define a place and time.”

Do you have any writing rituals, a particular place in your home or time of day you like to write?

I usually write when everyone is asleep so I can focus.

How do you walk the line between being an artist and being someone who has a voice that people listen to on certain political issues?

I am not an artist first, I’m a mom. And I’m somebody who has tried to have a better education on foreign policy. I think of the amount of times it’s been summarized, “You’re an artist, but you also use your voice,” you feel like, that’s just being a person. I’m trying to understand what is happening within our world, why so many things are the way they are. I’m trying to understand how to best be a guide for my children, to make sure that they are good people. I don’t often feel like I’m doing enough. So when you say, “You use your voice,” I feel like there are so many things I don’t quite know how to do or say at this time.

When your kids are grown, will you stay in L.A.?

I grew up in this town. I am here because I have to be here from a divorce, but as soon as they’re 18, I’ll be able to leave. When you have a big family, you want them to have privacy, peace, safety. I have a house now to raise my children, but sometimes this place can be … that humanity that I found across the world is not what I grew up with here. [After Los Angeles,] I’ll spend a lot of time in Cambodia. I’ll spend time visiting my family members wherever they may be in the world.

The public, we feel like we know you. Maybe we’ve gone through something you’ve gone through and talked about publicly — breast cancer, the loss of your mother. What is it like to have people express those connections to you? 

It’s one of the nicest things — maybe the only nice thing — about being a public person, your connection with other people. I realized when I came into this business, doing things like Gia or Girl, Interrupted, and I expressed so much of my madness and my pain. When people connected to it, I felt less alone. So if somebody were to talk to me about having gone through breast cancer or losing their parent, then I feel more deeply connected with another human being. To go into a room full of people you don’t know, and have a lot in common very quickly because somehow you’ve been in their home on the television or you made their children laugh or they know something personal, that’s really nice.

May I ask what the status of your divorce is?

No.

What do you do when you’re kicking back? At my house, I order Thai food and watch bad TV, and I wonder what your version of that is.

If somebody wants to watch bad TV and order Thai food, I’m the first one to put the fuzzy socks on and sit next to them. I like to be with people I love. I’m not somebody begging to be alone. I’m not that person that feels like, “Oh, I wish I could just be alone so I could have my guilty pleasures.” Because usually my guilty pleasure is being with somebody. I love doing something that makes them happy. That really does make me happy.

Who do you feel are your close friends? Who is the person you call at 3 in the morning?

I don’t really have those kinds of relationships. Maybe it’s losing your parent young. Maybe it’s working. Maybe it’s being somebody who’s been betrayed a lot. I don’t have a lot of those warm, close relationships as much that I lean on. But I have a few, and a few is enough. Loung [Ung, the Cambodian American human rights activist who is the subject of First They Killed My Father] is one of my closest friends. My mother was very close to me. I lost her. I’ve had a few friends over the years not be there for my family in their hour of need. I have a couple of people that I trust. What did Maria Callas die with? Two trusted people.

What do you still want to do professionally?

There are some bigger directing projects that would take longer that I haven’t been able to do. The one sitting at my desk now, a big epic that’s on my mind, the wonderful story of [British photojournalist] Don McCullin. In many ways, it’s about the rise and fall of journalism. Don’s an extraordinary man. He’s still around, and he’s become a friend and he’s amazing in what he’s seen. I would love to spend time and trace his steps and maybe learn more. I’m a terrible student. If I have to just read something, I don’t get it at all. But if I experience it or meet somebody and it’s personal, then I understand. I also still want to play a villain.

What about Maleficent? She’s a villain.

She’s a good guy. My villains end up being good guys. I suppose every villain is usually just someone in pain. To be honest, it would be nice to just do something maybe a little lighter. So my children can hear me laugh a little more. As an artist, there’s a part of me that thinks I would like to find a way to do something that would make people smile. 

This story appears in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.