Angelina Jolie Says She Feels ‘Like an Older Woman Now’ at 49, ‘and I Embrace That’

The ‘Maria’ actress explained how her music taste evolved with her age and life experiences.

Angelina Jolie on Aug. 29, 2024. 

The Oscar winner spoke to IndieWire at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival about her role in the film Maria as the late opera singer Maria Callas.

At one point in the interview, Jolie spoke about how she absorbs music and art with a different perspective from when she was younger.

“I’m 49. I do feel like an older woman now and I embrace that,” she explained.

“When I was younger, there were certain pieces of music and certain sounds that matched what I was feeling: I was falling in love, or I was curious about this, or whatever I was going through.”.

“There is nothing that meets what you’re feeling like opera.

[Some pieces] are so beautiful, so full of hope and so full of yearning,” continued Jolie.

“Opera is bigger. It is bigger than we allow ourselves to feel in every moment.”.

Angelina Jolie in “Maria”.

Learning more about opera as an art form and about Callas’ struggles helped Jolie get into character.

She said that “discovering, really listening to opera” is a “feeling that’s beyond a description.”.

“It’s such a complete feeling of being so open and human, and the totality of so much of the tragedies that she lived or played or felt or performed,” said the Maleficent actress.

“Most people carry a great deal of pain.

And so much of her art was the exploration of depth of emotion that she was able to connect to because she carried quite a lot.”.

Jolie added, “So I would never pretend to understand her completely, but I’m not sure it was an unhappiness as much as it was a relationship to deeply feeling life and tragedy.”

During a press conference at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 29, Jolie shared how her music taste evolved with her age and experiences.

“I was more punk.

I loved all music, but I probably listened to The Clash more than most, and as I’ve gotten older, classical music, opera.

I think there’s something I still love about the same music I did when I was younger. I’ll still listen to The Clash,” she said.

Jolie added, “When you’ve felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love, at a certain point there’s only certain sounds that can match that feeling, and to me the immensity of the feeling encapsulated within the sounds of opera, there is nothing like it.

And that feeling that would move all of us if we were to hear it, would be the only sound that would explain that pain.”.

Angelina Jolie on Aug. 29, 2024.

Back in 2021, Jolie opened up to British Vogue about aging and being eager to enter her 50s.

“I do like being older. I feel much more comfortable in my 40s than I did when I was younger,” she said at the time.

“Maybe because … I don’t know … maybe because my mom didn’t live very long, so there’s something about age that feels like a victory instead of a sadness for me.”.

(The star’s mom, Marcheline Bertrand, died in 2007 at age 56 from cancer.).

Jolie continued, “I’m looking forward to my 50s — I feel that I’m gonna hit my stride in my 50s.”.