Angelina Jolie makes playing a sexy fish look elegant, so it’s hard to imagine the actress having challenges when preparing for a role. In Pablo Larraín’s new movie, Maria, premiering at the Venice Film Festival this weekend, Jolie was “terribly nervous” about singing opera in the role. At a press conference on Thursday, Jolie explained the work that went into transforming into a French opera singer: “I spent almost seven months training, because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half. He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.” Per Jolie, it’ll be her singing debut, and because of her nerves, her first practice was in a “small room” with her sons guarding the door. “My first days, [Larraín] was very good to me in that we started in a more intimate first with very few crew members,” Jolie told AP. “And we ended at La Scala with everyone. So I had a little time to get my nerve. But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was terrified.”
Despite all of her prepwork, much of the singing in the movie comes from Maria Callas herself. However, Larraín blended musical techniques and physical movements to make Jolie transform into the singer on the screen, even if it’s not always her voice. “Opera requires a very particular style of singing — in the pitch, the color, the breathing, the posture,” he said to AP in the same interview. “Sometimes it’s a tiny bit of Angie and mostly Maria and then sometimes it’s more, but it’s always there. We needed to do that because it’s the only way that she could properly prepare the character, play it right, and then create the right illusion.” In other words, it’s all the beautiful sounds of the world in a single movie.