Angelina Jolie is opening up about rediscovering her singing voice. The actor earned rave reviews after her film Maria premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Angeline shared the intense shooting process for the psychological drama film about opera singer Maria Callas, which required her to use her singing voice. The actor shared it took some time to get there as she was criticized for her singing voice by an ex.

What Angelina said

Talking about the experience of shooting the film, Angelina said, “It was an out-of-body experience because I don’t sing. I had somebody in my life who was not kind to me about singing. It was a relationship I was in. And so I just assumed I couldn’t really sing. I’d been to theater school, so it was weird that it even had an effect on me. I just kind of adapted to this person’s opinion. So it took me getting past a lot of things to start singing. And discovering also that I was a soprano."

She added, "I thought I had a low voice my whole life. I was explaining [to the singing instructor] that my voice is deeper, and he said, ‘No, you’re actually a soprano.’ And probably something happened. Your voice changes when you go through different things in your life. So that was a shock. That was very strange.”

More details

In recent years, Angelina's personal life has been under intense scrutiny since she filed for divorce from Brad Pitt in September 2016. Their ongoing, highly publicized split has revealed serious allegations of abuse and resulted in Brad becoming estranged from their children.

Meanwhile, Maria is directed by Pablo Larrian, who also directed Jackie and Spencer. The film revolves on the final chapter of Callas' life in 1977, during which the opera diva struggled with substance abuse, a deteriorating voice, and significant weight loss. Jolie's performance earned universal acclaim, and she was also seen moved to tears during the standing ovation after the premiere.