Angelina Jolie Nominated for Golden Globe Playing Opera Icon Maria Callas

Jolie has been nominated at the Golden Globes ahead of this week's Netflix premiere of the biopic “Maria”

The Academy Award-winning Angelina Jolie plays the title character in Pablo Larraín’s new biopic on the American-Greek soprano Maria Callas, who was one of the most iconic performers of the 20th century. 

Jolie’s lauded performance in Maria was recently nominated for Best Female Actor in a Drama Film for the 2025 Golden Globes.

The film follows Callas when she retreated to Paris after a glamorous and tumultuous career in the public eye. In the isolated final week of her life, she had only her butler and housemaid to nurse her. 

Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53. In 2007, she was posthumously awarded the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award and remains the best-selling classical singer of all time.

Prior to taking on the role, Jolie had never sung in public before, and trained for seven months to prepare for filming. The singing heard in the final cut is a digital blend of Jolie and Callas herself, with different proportions of each individual depending on what the scene required.

The film made its debut at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, where it received a 10-minute ovation. Maria is now available on Netflix, which acquired the rights to the biopic. 

Maria is Larraín’s second film written by Steven Knight following their work together on Spencer; Knight was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay for his work on Dirty Pretty Things and is the creator of Peaky Blinders.

“I’m excited to partner again with the Netflix team who care so passionately about movies. This film is my most personal work yet,” Larraín said on Tudum. “It is a creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas who, after dedicating her life to performing for audiences around the world, finally decides to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself. I’m deeply honored to tell this story and share it with audiences worldwide like Maria did with her life.” 

“Thank you to the Golden Globes for this honor,” Jolie said. “I am humbled to be nominated alongside so many artists I deeply admire. I share this with my director, Pablo Larraín and all who were a part of making Maria such a rewarding experience. It's a privilege to have played Maria Callas and to be able to share her legacy with the world.”

(Image courtesy: Tudum/Netflix)