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Angelina Jolie took leading questions from journalists at Venice Film Festival on Thursday (29 August) over comparisons between her life in the public eye and that of Maria Callas, whom she plays in Pablo Larraín’s new film.
Maria rounds out the Chilean director’s trilogy of 20th-century biopics of famous women – after Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021).
It follows Jolie as Callas, “La Divina” of opera, in her final days. The American-Greek soprano was hounded by the press during her lifetime over her relationship with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who was violent and abandoned her for Jackie Kennedy.
Jolie, meanwhile, once one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, has been embroiled in a series of highly-publicized legal disputes with her ex-husband Brad Pitt since 2021 when the latter sued the former for “secretly” selling her shares in their French winery.
In the proceedings, Jolie alleged that Pitt had assaulted her and the couple’s children on a flight from France to California in 2016.
At the Venice press conference on Thursday, Jolie was asked about comparisons between her and her subject. “Well, there’s a lot I won’t say in this room, that you probably know or assume,” she responded with a laugh.
“I think the way I related to her may be a surprise – [it was] probably the part of her that’s extremely soft and doesn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she truly was, and as emotionally open as she truly was,” the Oscar-winner added.
“I share her vulnerability more than anything.”
Based on true accounts about Callas, Maria will tell the “tumultuous, beautiful and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris,” according to a press release.
In her four-star review for The Independent, film critic Clarisse Loughrey heaps praise on Jolie’s performance.
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“[Spencer star Kristen] Stewart and [Jackie star Natalie] Portman certainly brought a part of themselves to their respective roles,” she writes. “But Jolie and Callas feel the most like twinned spirits. It’s a career-defining bit of synchronicity, bolstered by one of Jolie’s very best performances.”
Jolie and Pitt are both promoting projects at Venice this year as the Ocean’s Eleven star shows off his latest collaboration with George Clooney, Wolfs.
However, festival organizers have ensured that the embattled former couple will not cross paths.
Artistic director Alberto Barbera told Vanity Fair earlier this month: “Angelina will be on the first day, on Thursday 29, and she will leave right after with Pablo Larraín to go to Telluride. Brad will arrive only on Saturday, to Venice.
“There is no way that they can cross each other at the Lido.”
Earlier this year, Jolie’s lawyers claimed that “Pitt’s history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s September 2016 plane trip”, but noted that the flight “marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well”, causing the Salt star to leave the relationship immediately.
Pitt vehemently denied the claims at the time, and he was never charged following an investigation into allegations of abuse on the 2016 flight.
