Angelina Jolie doesn’t have to think too hard to identify the most treasured part of her life.
In a “Good Morning America” interview with Micahel Strahan about her new film “Maria,” a biopic centered on famed opera singer Maria Callas, Jolie was asked if there is anything in her life that compares to Callas’ love of singing.
“My motherhood,” she replied, adding: “It’s my happiness. So you can take everything else away from me. Nothing else matters.”
Jolie became a mother in 2002 when she adopted Maddox, now 23, from an orphanage in Cambodia. She adopted her second child Zahara, 19, from Ethiopia in 2005 — and gave birth to Shiloh, her first biological child with Brad Pitt, in 2006.
The former couple became worldwide tabloid fodder when Pitt ended his relationship with then-wife Jennifer Aniston and started dating Jolie. They adopted Pax, now 20, from Vietnam in 2007, and had twins Knox and Vivienne in 2008.
Jolie acknowledged Thursday that none of her children “want to be in front of the camera” because “they weren’t born with privacy,” but said her sons Maddox and Pax joined her on set for “Maria” — and “suffered” through her opera training.
“I thought it was going to be a little more fake singing,” she told Strahan. “I thought it was going to be like, movie singing, and then I very quickly realized that you can’t fake-sing opera, which was, [it’s] still terrifying … Oh my god, the first day, I was an absolute lunatic.”
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Jolie previously revealed that filming those scenes took “almost seven months” of training.
The actor said Thursday that, while an earpiece allowed her “to make sure” she was singing the songs “technically the same way” Callas did, “the only thing that can be heard on set” was Jolie — and that she cried during her first lesson, which she likened to therapy.
Her children have endured struggles of their own, meanwhile, as Jolie filed for divorce in 2016 — and said Pitt had attacked her and their children, though the FBI did not charge him. The couple’s daughter Shiloh legally dropped Pitt’s last name earlier this year after turning 18.