Angelina Jolie recounts her first singing lesson to perform Maria Callas

Better than therapy, she says. Angelina Jolie is currently making the rounds on television to promote Mariathe biopic of Pablo Larraín in which she plays the singer Maria Callas. To live up to the talent of the legendary Greek opera singer, the actress had to take singing lessons. This is what she tells Michael Strahan in an interview for the show Good Morning America broadcast on November 21. And if the exercise proved useful for his voice, it would also have been useful for his mental health.

“You have to release all this”

“We don't realize that the different things that happen to us in our lives – I know you've been through a lot of things – we keep them in our bodies,” Jolie said. Everything is locked away somewhere to help us keep moving forward. And so, to really sing, and sing fully, you have to release all of that.” So the actress freed herself. “During my first lesson, I took a deep breath and cried…and I left!” she confided.

In an interview with the magazine Variety Angelina Jolie previously spoke about the introspective and liberating effects of singing, describing the practice as “the best therapy I've ever had.” “Honestly, I think I would tell a lot of people that before you try therapy and spend too much time there, you need to go to a singing class,” she added.

The Callas Challenge

Based on true events, the film Maria will tell the tumultuous and tragic story of the greatest opera singer in the world during the last years of her life, in Paris in the 1970s. We thus discover Angelina Jolie in the skin of a Maria Callas who is sometimes happy and in love, celebrating and on vacation, sometimes very alone, worried, in tears, almost tortured. A role that draws on emotion, for which Angelina Joli said: “I will give everything I can to meet the challenge.”