Breaking Baz: Angelina Jolie Says Portraying Maria Callas In Pablo Larraín’s ‘Maria’ Is A Role “That Comes Along Once In A Lifetime”
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Angelina Jolie says that roles such as her portrayal of Maria Callas — arguably the greatest prima donna assoluta soprano of all time — in director Pablo Larraín‘s Maria, come along “once in a lifetime.” The Academy Award-winning artist laughs, then adds, “I mean, it’s certainly the most challenging,” clearly referring to the seven months she spent learning six of the many dramatic arias most associated with Callas, who died of a heart attack at her Paris home on September 16, 1977.
She was 53. Larraín’s awards season movie, using a screenplay by Steven Knight, concerns itself with the coloratura soprano’s last days as she summons up memories of triumphs on the world’s most iconic opera stages and the realization that those artistic heights will not be achieved again, coupled with the tragedy of her love for shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Jolie says that she had wanted to work with Larraín for a very long time, :and this kind of work is not asked of me very often.
And if it’s asked of me, it’s not often with this kind of material and this director, so these things come once in a Iifetime.” Her experience on the film, “to be in the footsteps of someone you truly admire,” as she puts it, “was beyond anything I could imagine, and it was a gift emotionally for me.” The role, she says, “changed me as a person.
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