Angelina Jolie is well regarded for her discretion.
However, in a recent interview with BBC News, the Hollywood actress revealed her unfiltered thoughts over her experience of working on set with her eldest sons. She stated that they witnessed “the pain” that she often conceals from them.
In the next film, named Maria, the actress will play the lead role in a biopic about the opera diva Maria Callas.
Maddox and Pax, two of Jolie’s six children with her ex-husband Brad Pitt, contributed to the film in the capacity of production assistants.
“The character [Callas] has a lot of pain and they’ve of course seen me go through a lot of things, but they hadn’t experienced me expressing a lot of the pain that usually a parent hides from a child,” she explained to me.
“So they were there to witness some of that, but then we would hug or they would bring me cups of tea.”
Jolie continued by saying that it was “a new way” of discovering how to be honest with her children about her thoughts, and that it was “in an even greater way.”
It was written by Steven Knight, who was also the author of Peaky Blinders, and the film concentrates on Callas’s last years, which occurred in the 1970s when she was residing in Paris.
The film has presented Jolie with something of a comeback story, and it has the potential to lead to an Oscar nomination for best actress. Jolie has been performing very seldom in recent years, so the film has created more of a comeback narrative for her.
Callas was a Greek soprano who was born in the United States and is considered to be one of the most famous singers in opera.
In the film Maria, the singing moments include a combination of Jolie’s own voice and original recordings made by Callas.
In order to fulfill the part, the actress needed to learn how to sing opera, which she described as being “very physically demanding.”
She stated that the training took around seven months.
“We started with regular singing classes and it was challenging in many ways, but when the opera classes began, what it requires with your breathwork and your body and just the force of what you push through yourself, it’s just a very different physicality.”
Jolie, whose past film credits include Changeling, Maleficent, Salt, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, stated that she had never sang before and that she is “actually quite shy about singing.”
“It was probably one of the areas in my life that I was hesitant,” she remarked in response.
Having said that, she did mention that it was something that she loved doing.
“One of the greatest privileges of being an actor is you often are supported by a crew to try something and explore something you’ve never done and this certainly was most challenging,” she explained to us.
