Sunday, October 27, 2024



AFI FEST 2024 Presented By Canva Red Carpet Premiere And Q&A Of "Maria"



HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 26: (L-R) Barry Jenkins, Pablo Larraín, and Angelina Jolie speak onstage during AFI FEST 2024 presented by Canva, Red Carpet Premiere and Q&A of "Maria" at TCL Chinese Theatre on October 26, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI)










After a whirlwind tour of the Venice, Telluride and New York film festivals, Angelina Jolie and Pablo Larraín brought their film Maria to AFI Fest in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

The project — following Larraín’s previous looks at Jackie Kennedy in Jackie and Princess Diana in Spencer — explores the final days of legendary but troubled opera singer Maria Callas in 1970s Paris, as she fights to get back the iconic voice she has lost.

At a post-screening Q&A, moderated by Barry Jenkins, Larraín noted that “I don’t think there was another alternative, I don’t think this movie would exist if Angelina would have passed,” and required a star who could both capture Callas’ “larger than life” diva presence and have the discipline to learn to sing opera.

“I think when I was asked if I could sing, I thought, one, sing like an actor — I’ll sing as much as I can, I’ll do my best — not understanding what it is to sing opera,” Jolie admitted, calling the training process “a really emotional and very special and terrifying journey.”

She told the crowd that there haven’t been “a lot of moments in my career I’m asked to give everything you’ve got, and it’s one of the greatest gifts, especially as an artist, for somebody to ask for and want you to give everything you got, that you don’t know that you’ve got.” Jolie added she “got to be terrified again as an artist which is such a gift, because you get scared and have to do something you’re not sure you can do, and surprise yourself,” and with Larraín at the helm, “I knew I had a safe place to fail, so I was allowed to be free.”

On the red carpet ahead of the screening, Jolie told The Hollywood Reporter that despite transforming into an opera legend, she still doesn’t “really consider myself a singer, but I got through this one” and much like her character, through the role “I think I did find my voice again. I’d never sung at the top of my voice. I’d never had support to know how to do it, I’d never tried.”

“I’ve played a few real people in my life and you carry them with you; it’s different than other characters,” the star said. “Like she’s my sister now, she’s somebody who I know quite intimately and I really had to fall in love with to hope that I could help other people understand her, and I had to understand her to hope I was saying and doing the right thing. So I’ll always hear her music and maybe smile a little bit differently than someone else, because I feel close.”



HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 26: Angelina Jolie speaks onstage during AFI FEST 2024 presented by Canva, Red Carpet Premiere and Q&A of "Maria" at TCL Chinese Theatre on October 26, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI)






Callas, made famous for her three-octave soprano vocal range, died in Paris in 1977 of a heart attack at age 53. Jolie underwent months of training to portray the renowned vocalist.

On the red carpet on Oct. 26, Jolie spoke to PEOPLE about how she connected with the character and where she sees an intersection between herself and Callas.

"I know there are certain things that people would assume from the distance that we have in common, but I think what we have in common maybe is that we share a certain loneliness in kind of sometimes doing our work where we're the one, I don't know, up at night, alone, trying to figure something out," she told PEOPLE, adding, "I don't want to speak too much about it because it's too personal, but there's definitely a loneliness and a work ethic."

"I may be many things, but I'm a very hard worker, right? I'm an imperfect person, but I work very hard and she does. And so I think we see ourselves, I don't know if she or I ever would see ourselves as anything but a performer and a worker who has a job to do, and probably very hard on ourselves," Jolie continued.








Angelina Jolie switched up her look with curly hair for Saturday's 2024 AFI Fest premiere of “Maria,” where she spoke to “Extra’s” Terri Seymour.

She looked ravishing!

Terri commented of Jolie's performance in the Pablo Larraín biopic about opera icon Maria Callas, “You have faced a lot of challenges in your life, but I am sure learning to sing opera was terrifying."

“Absolutely, it was the hardest, artistically the hardest," Angelina offered.

She added, “What an extraordinary challenge — what a gift — to have these teachers and a director that trusted me and encouraged me, to sing these arias, and listen to this woman."

She said to be combined in any way with Callas in art makes her pinch herself, calling it "really a gift.”

When asked about the tumultuous affair between Callas and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, Jolie replied, “I don’t know if that part fascinated me. She worked and she was very, very young. A lot of people have to work hard, and thinking somebody comes into your life and says, 'I want to have fun with you, I want you to relax, I care for you, I love you,' and I think for that brief time, she felt a certain kind of support and freedom, when it was at its best."

As for it being a “very heavy role,” she said her sons were a huge help. “Well, my boys were there, so I was very lucky. When I had my big emotional scenes, they would come bring me a tea and give me a hug.”

She went on, “The blessing of being an artist is we get to express a lot of things that we all carry inside ourselves. We all carry pain, and I have the gift that I am able to be supported to let it all out and have a safe place to do so. I wish that for everybody — that they can be supported… That they could just scream and cry it out… So, usually, I went home pretty light, then got back into it the next day."

Terri asked if she Angelina could relate to Maria, to which the star said, “I relate to that she is very hard-working and she is often alone."

Smiling, she quickly clarified, "That came out sad, and it wasn’t intended to be.”




































With her vocal coaches

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 26: (L-R) Angelina Jolie, Lori Stinson, and Eric Vetro attend Netflix's Maria AFI Fest premiere reception at Mother Wolf on October 26, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Netflix)

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