Angelina Jolie has said she hopes no one ever makes a biopic about her life.
The actor has herself starred in several biopics. She played supermodel Gia Carangi in 1998’s Gia and journalist Mariane Pearl in 2007’s A Mighty Heart, and plays opera singer Maria Callas in the forthcoming film Maria.
But she does not want one made about her. “That gets the most insane question award,” Jolie told The Sunday Times. “When you are a public person and you are playing [someone else], you are conscious of how you would hate for somebody to interpret your life or think they understand your life, so we tried to be thoughtful [with Maria]. Let’s hope there isn’t one about my life.”
The Oscar winner, 49, stars in Pablo Larraín’s biopic about the final days of Callas, the famed American-born Greek opera singer, before her fatal 1977 heart attack.
Jolie also spoke about the extensive training that she went through to properly portray Callas, describing the lessons as therapy.
“It was the therapy I didn’t realise I needed,” she said.
“Singing opera requires you to be as emotionally open as you possibly can be — it’s not like singing in the car. It’s cathartic. I have never pushed myself or opened myself up in that way, that was daunting.”
Jolie has earlier opened up about the emotional release she felt while practising her singing for the film.
“I walked into the room with the piano, and somebody said, ‘Ok, let’s see where you are at.’ And I got really emotional. I took a big deep breath, and I let out a sound, and I started crying,” she told Variety.
“I think we all don’t realise how much we hold inside our bodies, and how much we carry and how much that affects our sound and our voice and our ability to make sound.
“I have been holding a lot for a long time, and that beginning and that sound, and then when that sound would eventually come, it was the best therapy I’ve ever had.
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“Honestly, I think I would tell a lot of people before you try therapy and spend too much time there, go to singing class.”
After the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this summer, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey praised Jolie’s performance, calling it “career-defining”.
“[It’s] one of Jolie’s very best performances,” she said in her four-star review.
Maria will be out in theaters on 27 November. It will be available to stream on Netflix in the US from 11 December and in the UK from 10 January 2025.