In her new movie Maria, Angelina Jolie plays the titular role of iconic opera singer Maria Callas, for whom singing meant so much.

For Jolie, who sat down to discuss her new work with Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan, motherhood is the main focus in her life, in the way singing was for Callas.

“It’s my happiness,” Jolie shared. “You can take everything else away from me. Nothing else matters.”

Jolie is mom to six kids: sons Maddox, Pax and Knox, and daughters Zahara, Shiloh and Vivienne.

And despite her life in the spotlight, Jolie said her children don’t have the desire to follow her footsteps into acting.

“None of my children want to be in front of the camera at this time,” Jolie said. “They’re quite private. Shiloh’s extremely private. They weren’t born with privacy, right? So I hope they can have that as they grow.”

For her starring role in Maria, Jolie learned how to sing opera in order to embody the tragic prima donna and her final days living in Paris while struggling to make a career comeback.

“All of my children suffered through my early opera singing in the house before I got kinda good, which was a nightmare,” Jolie recalled.

Jolie said she and Callas may have even been friends, had their paths ever crossed in real life. Callas died on Sept. 16, 1977, following a heart attack.

“There’s obvious things that people would tie our lives and see we have in common. But I think it’s more … how hard she is in herself with her work, sometimes seen as strong, but actually very vulnerable and human. I certainly am,” Jolie said.

“I think we would have been friends,” she added. “She might have hated me at first. Think it would have grown on her.”

Maria debuts in select theaters on Nov. 27 and will be available to stream on Netflix starting on Dec. 11.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.