To play Maria Callas, Angelina Jolie had to learn how to breathe again

Angelina Jolie never expected to hit all the notes. But finding the breath of Maria Callas was enough to bring things out of Jolie that she didn’t even know were in her.

“All of us, we really don’t realize where things land in our body over a lifetime of different experiences and where we hold it to protect ourselves,” Jolie said in a recent interview. “We hold it in our stomachs. We hold it in our chest. We breathe from a different place when we’re nervous or we’re sad.

“The first few weeks were the hardest because my body had to open and I had to breathe again,” she adds. “And that was a discovery of how much I wasn’t.”

In Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” which Netflix released in theaters last week before it begins streaming on Dec 11, Jolie gives, if not the performance of her career, then certainly of her last decade. Beginning with 2010’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Jolie has spent recent years directing films while prioritizing raising her six children.

“So my choices for quite a few years were whatever was smart financially and short. I worked very little the last eight years,” says Jolie. “And I was kind of drained. I couldn’t for a while.”

But her youngest kids are now 16. And for the first time in years, Jolie is back in the spotlight, in full movie-star mode. Her commanding performance in “Maria” seems assured of bringing Jolie her third Oscar nomination. (She won supporting actress in 2000 for “Girl, Interrupted.”) For an actress whose filmography might lack a signature movie, “Maria” may be Jolie's defining role.

Jolie's oldest children, Maddox and Pax, worked on the set of the film. There, they saw a version of their mother they hadn't seen before.

“They had certainly seen me sad in my life. But I don’t cry in front of my children like that,” Jolie says of the emotion Callas dredged up in her. “That was a moment in realizing they were going to be with me, side by side, in this process of really understanding the depth of some of the pain I carry.”

Jolie, who met a reporter earlier this fall at the Carlyle Hotel, didn't speak in any detail of that pain. But it was hard not to sense some it had to do with her lengthy and ongoing divorce from Brad Pitt, with whom she had six children.

Just prior to meeting, a judge allowed Pitt’s remaining claim against Jolie, over the French winery Château Miraval, to proceed. A judge has ruled that Pitt must disclose documents Jolie’s legal team have sought that they allege include “communications concerning abuse.” Pitt has denied ever being abusive.

The result of the U.S. presidential election was also just days old, though Jolie — special envoy for the United Nations Refugee Agency from 2012 to 2022 – wasn’t inclined to talk politics. Asked about Donald Trump’s win, she responded, “Global storytelling is essential,” before adding: “That’s what I’m focusing on. Listening. Listening to the voices of people in my country and around the world.”

Balancing such things — reports concerning her private life, questions that accompany someone of her fame — is a big reason why Jolie is so suited to the part of Callas. The film takes place during the American-born soprano’s final days. (She died of a heart attack at 53 in 1977.) Spending much of her time in her grand Paris apartment, Callas hasn’t sung publicly in years; she’s lost her voice. Imprisoned by the myth she’s created, Callas is redefining herself and her voice. An instructor tells her he wants to hear “Callas, not Maria." The movie, of course, is more concerned with Maria.

It’s Larrain’s third portrait of 20th century female icon, following “Jackie” (with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy) and “Spencer” (with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana). As Callas, Jolie is wonderfully regal — a self-possessed diva who deliciously, in lines penned by screenwriter Steven Knight, spouts lines like: “I took liberties all my life and the world took liberties with me.”

Asked if she identified with that line, Jolie answered, “Yeah, yeah.” Then she took a long pause.

“I’m sure people will read a lot into this and there’s probably a lot I could say but don’t want to feed into,” Jolie eventually continues. “I know she was a public person because she loved her work. And I’m a public person because I love my work, not because I like being public. I think some people are more comfortable with a public life, and I’ve never been fully comfortable with it.”

When Larraín first approached Jolie about the role, he screened “Spencer” for her. That film, like “Jackie” and “Maria,” eschews a biopic approach to instead intimately focus on a specific moment of crisis. Larraín was convinced Jolie was meant for the role.

“I felt she could have that magnetism,” Larraín says. “The enigmatic diva that’s come to a point in her life where she has to take control of her life again. But the weight of her experience, of her music, of her singing, everything, is on her back. And she carries that. It’s someone who’s already loaded with a life that’s been intense.”

“There’s a loneliness that we both share,” Jolie says. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think people can be alone and lonely sometimes, and that can be part of who they are.”

Larraín, the Chilean filmmaker, grew up in Santiago going to the opera, and he has long yearned to bring its full power and majesty to a movie. In Callas, he heard something that transfixed him.

“I hear something near perfection, but at the same time, it’s something that’s about to be destroyed,” Larraín says. “So it’s as fragile and as strong as possible. It lives in both extremes. That’s why it’s so moving. I hear a voice that’s about to be broken, but it doesn’t.”

In Callas’ less perfect moments singing in the film, Larraín fuses archival recordings of Callas with Jolie’s own voice. Some mix of the two runs throughout “Maria.” “Early in the process,” Jolie says, “I discovered that you can’t fake-sing opera.”

Jolie has said she never sang before, not even karaoke. But the experience has left her with a newfound appreciation of opera and its healing properties.

“I wonder if it’s something you lean into as you get older,” Jolie says. “Maybe your depth of pain is bigger, your depth of loss is bigger, and that sound in opera meets that, the enormity of it.”

If Larraín’s approach to “Maria” is predicated on an unknowingness, he's inclined to say something similar about his star.

“Because of media and social media, some people might think that they know a lot about Angelina,” he says. “Maria, I read nine biographies of her. I saw everything. I read every interview. I made this movie. But I don’t think I would be capable of telling you who she was us. So if there’s an element in common, it’s that. They carry an enormous amount of mystery. Even if you think that you know them, you don’t.”

Whether “Maria” means more acting in the future for Jolie, she's not sure. “There's not a clear map,” she says. Besides, Jolie isn't quite ready to shake Callas.

“When you play a real person, you feel at some point that they become your friend,” says Jolie. “Right now, it’s still a little personal. It’s funny, I’ll be at a premiere or I’ll walk into a room and someone will start blaring her music for fun, but I have this crazy internal sense memory of dropping to my knees and crying.”

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