Angelina Jolie Didn’t Realize How Much She’d ‘Lost My Voice’ After Mom’s Death and ‘When Someone Hurt Me’

Angelina Jolie is opening up about the emotional process of rediscovering her voice for Maria.

When the Oscar winner, 49, sat down with Wicked‘s Cynthia Erivo for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series, Jolie admitted she was “terrified” to learn to sing opera in order to portray Maria Callas.

While the actress credited director Pablo Larraín with ensuring she “had the right teachers, Italian classes, opera singing, body breathing,” she also told Erivo, 37, that learning to sing proved therapeutic for her.

“People keep quoting me because I made, not the mistake— I admitted it was like a therapy. But it really is,” she said. “Because I didn’t realize the practice of it and the learning of it is one thing, but it was finding my voice and letting my voice out that was really hard for me. And I was really emotional about it.”

“I didn’t know how much I had lost my voice. Maybe when I lost my mother, maybe when someone hurt me, whatever it was, the different things that had made it smaller and locked it away,” Jolie added.

“So finding it and letting it come out was very emotional, and such a feeling that I wish for everybody to have.”

Jolie’s mother Marcheline Bertrand died Jan. 27, 2007, at age 56, years after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and breast cancer. 

Though Jolie has made a number of movies since her mom’s death, Maria is her first film since 2021’s Marvel movie Eternals, and stepping back in front of a film camera to portray Callas had a significant impact on her.

“I wish everybody could know what you feel when you sing at the top of your beautiful voice, and you know what can come out of your body,” Jolie told Erivo of singing in the film. “And it’s not just what you can do for an audience or how you tell a story, it’s that you can make that sound. Maria said something; she said she doesn’t like to hear records because they’re perfect.”

As Jolie and Erivo discussed their respective roles in Maria and Wicked, Erivo pointed out that audiences do not often see “these bigger-than-life women” on the big screen.

“They’re a good woman if they’re apologizing. Or if they’re breaking,” Jolie responded. “Maria didn’t have a mother that loved her and told her that she was enough as she was, so both of our characters come from this being alone since they were little and feeling a little different for very different reasons.”

Maria is now streaming on Netflix.