Actor said she didn’t understand ‘how much life changes your voice’. Angelina Jolie has reflected on how a remark from someone in her life about her abilities continued to impact her years later. The Hollywood star, 49, plays famed opera singer Maria Callas in Pablo Larrains’ forthcoming biopic Maria, which she has said helped her through one of the darkest periods of her life.
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Jolie took singing lessons to prepare for the role, but revealed in a new interview that she was once told she “couldn’t” sing. “I didn’t realise how much that had blocked me. I didn’t realise how much I didn’t know my voice. I didn’t understand how much life changes your voice, whether it be childbirth or death, or someone you love, or sickness or whatever it may be.
“But we hold things in our body,” she continued. “We change the way we are. And somewhere along the way – I’m 49 years old – I lost my voice. So it was such a gift to have these seven months [of training], to have someone hold my hand and help me take a deep breath and try to make sound again.”.
Jolie said she recommended trying to sing opera “to everyone” because it required singing with “your full physical body, your full vocal, and your full emotion”. “And we, especially as women, are very rarely allowed, asked, encouraged to give with our full power,” she said. “We are adjusting to the room, to our children, to society. Something along the way forms us, and we don’t bust out with everything.”.
