Angelina Jolie to play Maria Callas on film
NewsThe Chilean film-maker Pablo Larraín has cast Angelina Jolie to play the opera singer in a new biopic.
Larrain’s last film was on Princess Diana (he seems to like lives cut short).
No word yet on further casting. We’ll let you know when auditions commence for Di Stefano, Rudolf Bing and Walter Legge.
Good biopics require good imitations, and I just don’t think Jolie is good enough of an actress to imitate anyone, and not Callas either. At minimum, she better be able to lip sync to Callas to perfection, otherwise, don’t even bother begin shooting…
Agreed, but at the very least it will shine some light on Callas to people who know nothing about her. Hopefully get some new people interested in opera…
Do you really think most movie goers will even give it a chance?
Legendary as Mme Callas has been to a dead or dying generation (I include myself), if a movie of her life were to be made, her legacy would be better served with an actress equal to her passion and authority on the stage and in life.
Other than being a brunette, Ms. Jolie doesn’t meet the mark.
I absolutely agree with the above Maria Callas was above all else the greatest dramatic actress of Opera both vocally and in sense of stage presence you would need a truly great actress to pull this off being that she has the lip sync not big on Jolie
Give her a chance; you might be pleasantly surprised.
Callas was perfection.
She was indisputably a goddess on stage, despite being perfectly flawed.
Yes, Maria Callas was something else. When she sang I absolutely believed!!
Fanny Ardant’s already done it.
Wish they would leave Callas, such an immense genius provoking artist in peace, offering homages to her with silence.
Suggestions for Luciano Pavarotti next? Danny deVito?
Tom Cruise as Lorin Maazel?
This is a farce in the making.
Or the duchess of sussex as Bessie Smith
Give Zach Galifianakis a good shave and let him play Aristotle Onassis.
How to capture Callas, that complex self-performance, a chubby homely girl born in Manhattan gone back to Greece and reinvented herself as The Diva of All Divas, more Italian than the Italians, more Greek than the Greeks, but in interviews in English, peeking through that commanding performance of European glamour, is that New York accent and attitude.
They all failed: Fanny Ardent, Zoe Caldwell, Patty Lupone, Faye Dunaway, Tyne Daly, et al, all captured a bit of her.
I won’t comment on a film the world has yet to see but I have seen other biopics of great performers and most have been done an injustice. A strong case in point is Nicolo Paganini. Three biopics have been made of him and,frankly,they are total garbage. I refer to the Magic Bow, the Klaus Kinski travesty and the more recent film with David Garrett.
However,there was a splendid solution to this problem. There was a great violinist with very considerable acting talents who could have played the part of Paganini brilliantly.Sadly,it is too late. Ivry Gitlis is no longer with us.
High time that film companies got their act together.