This Biopic Could Be Angelina Jolie’s Oscar Comeback

She’s one of the most famous actresses to have ever lived, but how formidable is Angelina Jolie’s filmography?

After winning the supporting-actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted” (1999), Jolie made a few big hits like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” as well as a string of movies that remained steadfastly so-so. (Who remembers “Taking Lives,” “Come Away” or “Life or Something Like It”?) Jolie’s most recent movies, the mildly received “Those Who Wish Me Dead” and “Eternals,” were released back in 2021, and her only other Oscar nomination happened ages ago, for Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Changeling.”

Jolie has said that she takes frequent breaks from acting to spending time with her family, but it’s still been awhile since a movie really leveraged all she has to offer. Perhaps that’s why journalists at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday were quick to herald a career comeback in “Maria,” which stars Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas: Here, at last, is a project that knows how to take full advantage of her star persona.

Directed by Pablo Larraín, “Maria” follows the soprano near the end of her life as she reflects on the pressures of fame, her tortured romance with the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and a singing career that began to falter as Callas lost confidence in her voice. It’s a meaty role that lets Jolie switch between strength and tremulous vulnerability with a couple of operatic set pieces that have her singing directly to the camera, all but asking the viewer to marvel at that movie-star face.

Musical biopics tend to be catnip for Oscar voters, and at Thursday’s news conference for “Maria,” the first question was whether Jolie suspected she might have a shot at gold when taking on this role. The actress demurred, saying the people she was most eager to please were the opera fans familiar with Callas.

“My fear would be to disappoint them,” Jolie said. “Of course, if in my own business there’s response to the work, I’m grateful.”

In its focus on a famous woman grappling with the glare of the spotlight, “Maria” forms a trilogy with Larraín’s films “Jackie” (2016), which starred Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, and “Spencer” (2021), with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. (That Onassis was romantically involved with both Callas and Kennedy suggests an alternate version of Larraín’s oeuvre in which the Greek shipping tycoon would pop up in post-credit sequences, à la Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, to recruit Larraín’s leading ladies into an Avengers team of best-actress contenders.)

“When you work with Pablo, you can’t do anything by half,” Jolie said. To prepare for the film, she spent several months on vocal training and Italian classes. Though Larraín asked Jolie to sing the arias live on set, what we hear in the film are archival recordings of Callas with some of Jolie’s singing technologically blended in.

Jolie said she was “terribly nervous” when first asked to sing and kept apologizing to the crew for her performance. Still, spending so much time steeped in opera encouraged her to fall in love with the emotionally dynamic art form, she said: “When you’ve felt a certain level of despair or pain of love, at a certain point, there’s only some sounds that can encapsulate that feeling.”

Lately, Jolie has been locked in litigation with her ex-husband Brad Pitt, who will be in Venice in three days for the premiere of his new film, “Wolfs.” The festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, has said the scheduling of both movies was arranged so that Jolie and Pitt would not have to cross paths.

At the news conference for “Maria,” it sometimes felt as if Jolie was alluding to her troubles with Pitt. When asked how she related to Callas, who experienced her fair share of romantic pain and despair, Jolie chose her words carefully. “There’s a lot I won’t say in this room that you probably know or assume,” she told the press. “I share her vulnerability more than anything.”