Angelina Jolie talks about her late mother, Maria Calla's Netflix film

NEW YORK – For Angelina Jolie, the seven months of singing lessons weren’t the hardest part about playing opera star Maria Callas.

It was more like “dog training,” she jokes, sitting on the couch of a hotel on the Upper East Side with “Maria” director Pablo Larraín. The biopic was filmed in Budapest and her canine co-stars often only responded in Hungarian. So Jolie spent a lot of time behind the scenes, learning commands and giving treats to the film’s loyal lap dogs.

“The film has a lot of depth and gravity, but also a lot of charm,” says Jolie. “It was very important to capture her relationships, her personal life, her eccentricities – and her poodles.”

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Angelina Jolie pays tribute to her late mother Marcheline Bertrand with the film “Maria Callas”.

“Maria” (now streaming on Netflix) dramatizes the reclusive final days of Callas, who died of a heart attack in 1977 at the age of 53. Her story unfolds through a series of flashbacks and interviews with a documentary film crew as the American-Greek soprano reflects on her reviews, romance novels and art.

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The film marks the end of a trilogy for Larraín, who helped Natalie Portman (“Jackie”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) earn Oscar nominations for their respective biopics about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana. Awards experts clearly expect Jolie, 49, to receive her third Oscar nomination for the performance, having won best supporting actress in 2000 for “Girl, Interrupted.”

For Larraín, the project stems from a lifelong love of opera: “When I was growing up, my mother took me to the opera twice a month,” he says. Callas has always strived to make opera more accessible to the masses, and Larraín hopes to do the same with this film. “We’re talking about something that sounds elitist but shouldn’t be.”

Callas’ own mother, Litsa (played by Lydia Koniordou), played a large role throughout her life. Because she wanted a son, Litsa resented her daughter from birth. And when she discovered that Callas could sing at the age of five, she pushed her to perform professionally.

“My life has been so shaped by my mother’s love,” says Jolie. “Maria had a mother who was really terrible to her, so her relationship to her art was perhaps almost the opposite of mine. She was forced to succeed; she was pressured because she wasn’t good enough; She was heavily criticized by her mother. And I think that affected her throughout her life because she felt unlovable and that if she wasn’t perfect, she had no value.

Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, who gave up acting after the birth of their children. Bertrand died of breast and ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56; With “Maria,” Jolie hopes to honor her mother.

“She really wanted to be an actress, she studied theater and loved theater,” says Jolie. “One of the reasons I became an actress was because I wanted to work and help us pay bills when I was young, but also because it just made her so happy. She always wrote letters to my characters. I made the most ridiculous music video or…” something and she would still text them.

“She gave me creativity and communication through character,” says Jolie. When we work in Hollywood, “there is so much emphasis on public life. But the real reason we do this is to study the human condition; the exploration of what it means to feel different things or to be alive.”

Angelina Jolie reflects on motherhood and shares a “real love” of work with her daughter Vivienne

Before filming “Maria,” Jolie immersed herself in all things Callas: she took Italian classes and studied the icon’s footage closely so she could capture her graceful posture and lyrical speaking voice. In the film, the actress’s operatic singing is mixed with real recordings of Callas.

“When I first started singing, I would pass out after almost every time I sang,” Jolie says. “I just couldn’t fully understand that my body wasn’t strong enough. It’s like being an athlete – it’s one of the most physically demanding things you can do.”

Larraín compares the experience of watching Callas perform to that of Olympic gymnast Simone Biles: the awe of someone achieving something “so extraordinary” and the intense dedication it requires. But he is also moved by the film’s more emotional themes: how Callas learns to put aside the expectations of others and sing only for himself.

“It’s very related: the idea of being gentler with yourself and not listening to other people’s opinions,” says Larraín. “In general, I care about what my children think of me. Stay close to the people you love.”

“I feel the same way,” adds Jolie, who shares six children with her ex-husband Brad Pitt. She remembers again her own mother, who “constantly played my movies on TV just to hear my voice in the house. Isn’t that sweet? But only the nice ones – ‘Maria’ would have made them.” too sad. I don’t think she wants to see me die.

“But when you’re young, you think, ‘Mom, turn it off!’ Now I completely understand this because I’m the mom who does everything and I watch it a thousand times.

Earlier this year, Jolie won her first Tony Award for producing Broadway’s Best Musical winner “The Outsiders,” based on SE Hinton’s coming-of-age classic about rival gangs. Her daughter Vivienne, 16, introduced her to the project after an early workshop and is considered a production assistant.

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Angelina Jolie talks about her late mother, Maria Calla’s Netflix film

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