How Angelina Jolie Healed Past Trauma Through Opera? Exploring Her Maria Journey and Therapy Tip

In a recent interview, Angelina Jolie revealed how playing Maria Callas helped her heal past trauma through opera, sharing how singing served as therapy and offering an emotional healing tip.

Written by Seema Sinha , Entertainment Journalist

Updated on Nov 21, 2024 | 07:55 AM GMT | 64K

Angelina Jolie (Getty Images)

Angelina Jolie had to relive and heal many of her past traumas to find the singing voice for her role in Maria. In a GMA interview with Michael Strahan airing Thursday, November 21, the Academy Award-winning actress, 49, discussed her transformation into Maria Callas, the late American opera singer revered for her iconic vocals.

GMA shared a clip of their interview with People, where Strahan, 52, asked Jolie to break down her description of opera lessons as therapy and much more.

“We don’t realize that different things that happen to us in life—I know you’ve been through many things—we hold them in our body,” Jolie began. “Everything is just locked somewhere to help us keep going. And so to really sing, and sing very fully, you have to unlock all of that.”

And unlock Jolie did, as she revealed she took a deep breath and let her bitter past experiences flow out of her body in the form of tears. That’s pretty much what her first opera lesson for her role in and as Maria consisted of.

In the aforementioned film, directed by Pablo Larrain, moviegoers will hear Jolie’s vocals blended with real-life recordings of Callas’s singing. The actress previously shared that she spent seven months training her vocals for the role.

Jolie told Variety last month that singing, for her, worked better than therapy, as she advised people in need of psychological help to give singing a try to truly tap into those hidden traumatic emotions—something that traditional therapy alone cannot achieve.

In a previous The Hollywood Reporter interview, Jolie also revealed that she had lost her confidence in singing because of an ex who wasn’t a fan of her vocal prowess. During her conversation with the outlet, Jolie wondered why she let his opinions affect her despite having proper theater training.

Jolie also shared with THR that playing a singer helped her discover she was a soprano, a revelation that surprised her since she had always believed her vocals leaned more toward a gruff and deeper character.

Maria releases in select theaters on November 27 and hits Netflix on December 11.