The famous Chilean director talks about the choice of Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas and the intense preparation of the actress.
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| Image By: Pax Jolie-Pitt |
Angelina Jolie is ready to land at the Lido of Venice to present Maria, the new film by the famous Chilean director Pablo Larraín, at the Venice Film Festival. Focused on the figure of the iconic opera singer Maria Callas. The filmmaker in a recent interview for Vanity Fair spoke about Jolie's intense preparation to bring the last years of the soprano's life to the big screen.
Pablo Larraín on the decision to cast Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas: “I needed an actress who, naturally and organically, could be that diva“
Pablo Larraín, known for directing Jackie (2016), with Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, and Spencer (2021) starring Kristen Stewart as Lady Diana Spencer, will conclude his trilogy on women who characterized the twentieth century with Maria.
Maria, which will follow the famous soprano in the last years of her life, is set in Paris in the seventies. Speaking about the script and the plot of the film, Larraín said “She has become the sum of the tragedies she has played on stage. The film is about someone who, after dedicating her life to the spectators who listened to her around the world, decides to find her own voice, her own identity, to finally do something just for her“. Speaking about the decision to choose Angelina Jolie for the role of Maria Callas, the filmmaker explained: “She [Jolie] is the greatest diva of the 20th century. I didn’t want to work with someone who didn’t already have [these qualities]. I needed an actress who could naturally and organically be that diva, carry that weight, that presence. And Angelina had them.”
According to what the director revealed in the interview with Vanity Fair, Angelina Jolie had a 6-month preparation before starting the film. In this preparation phase, the actress worked on her posture, and breathing, and above all she took intense voice lessons to be able to sing in some scenes of the film. In Maria, in the singing scenes, Larraín used both Jolie’s voice and Callas’s actual voice. “We hear Angelina and we also hear Maria Callas. When we see Maria Callas in her early years, most of the sound is 90-95% Callas, and when we hear an older Callas and in the present of the film, then it is almost all Angelina. Talking about the need to use Maria Callas's real voice, the director said: "How can you make a film about Maria Callas without using her voice? You can't. You can't make a film like this with an actress who doesn't really sing. It doesn't have to be karaoke. It was very difficult for her [Jolie], but she did it."
Talking about the great synergy he had with Angelina Jolie during the filming of the film, Pablo Larraín revealed: "Sometimes she would sense me. We would finish shooting a scene and she would look at me, the same way I looked at her."
Source: Vanity Fair
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