Angelina Jolie Had to Learn How to Breathe Again to Portray Maria Callas

Angelina Jolie never expected to hit all the notes. But finding the breath of Maria Callas was enough to bring things out of Jolie that she didn’t even know were in her. “All of us, we really don’t realize where things land in our body over a lifetime of different experiences and where we hold it to protect ourselves,” Jolie said in a recent interview. “We hold it in our stomachs. We hold it in our chest. We breathe from a different place when we’re nervous or we’re sad. “The first few weeks were the hardest because my body had to open and I had to breathe again,” she adds. “And that was a discovery of how much I wasn’t.” In Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” which Netflix released in theaters Wednesday before it begins streaming on Dec. 11, Jolie gives, if not the performance of her career, then certainly of her last decade. Beginning with 2010’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Jolie has spent recent years directing films while prioritizing raising her six children.