‘Maria’ Breakout Aggelina Papadopoulou on Playing the Young Opera Icon in Her Screen Debut and ‘Sweet’ First Meeting With Angelina Jolie

How does a 17-year-old singer from Greece end up sharing the screen with one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the world? For newcomer Aggelina Papadopoulou, who plays young Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” it all started with a mysterious request sent to her music school in Athens.

The request asked for female singers aged 17 to 22 with brown hair who could resemble legendary American-Greek soprano Maria Callas. The hopefuls learned nothing else before sending in their tapes. “We had less than a day to prepare the two songs you hear me singing in the movie,” Papadopoulou tells Variety ahead of the Greek premiere of “Maria” as the opening film of the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

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It took less than three weeks between the singer sending in that first tape and hearing she got the role in the film. “It happened pretty quickly for me, but from what I know they searched for a long time in a lot of countries, especially Greece, Spain and Italy because Pablo wanted Maria to have Mediterranean features,” she says. “The team saw thousands of girls.”

Despite this being her first-ever screen role, acting came naturally to Papadopoulou, the daughter of a music school owner and actor Nikos Papadopoulos (“Border Café”). If acting felt organic, the dimension of working in a film like “Maria” still hasn’t quite settled with the young actress, who only learned about the scale of the production upon heading off to Budapest for the shoot and could only share she was part of the film on the day of its Venice Film Festival world premiere.

“It was a big surprise when I realized it was a film with Angelina Jolie. I wasn’t sure if I had heard right,” she says. “My teacher, my parents, everyone was just so happy because you don’t have opportunities like this in Greece, especially for a movie filmed abroad.”

As Papadopoulou plays Callas at 17 and Jolie in adulthood, the duo scarcely shot together, apart from one key scene unveiled toward the end of Larraín’s biopic. The newcomer fondly recalls that first meeting, saying the Oscar-winning actress made sure to visit her and chat for a while before shooting. “I saw her passing by my room, she saw I was inside and came back to talk to me,” Papadopoulou recalls. “She hugged me and it was really sweet because in my mind she wasn’t an approachable person, she was a star and a diva like Callas. They have that similarity.”

Jolie’s son Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt was also in Budapest working as additional crew and Papadopoulou recalls striking a friendship with the budding actor. “We still keep in touch, which is nice,” she says. “He was the one who told me Angelina would be at the film’s London premiere and I hope to see him again on a red carpet.”

The young actress added that this was a “hard” first role, especially when it came to encapsulating Callas’ emotional state in the years when she was being physically and psychologically abused by an overbearing mother. “I was trying to feel all the emotions Maria was feeling when she was a teenager and it was even harder because this was her real life,” Papadopoulou says. “Pablo [Larraín] has a daughter around the same age and he told me he couldn’t imagine those things happening to a young girl.”

Speaking about Larraín, Papadopoulou is particularly grateful the Chilean director cast a Greek actress to play young Callas. “They found a great singer in the U.S. — someone who is much more prepared and has a better voice,” she says. “I appreciate Pablo wanting to have someone from Greece because [Callas] is so important here. We have theaters named after her. I think she would like to be portrayed by a Greek actress.”

Papadopoulou grew up listening to Callas as a kid, offering a heartwarming anecdote about the day she learned she was cast: “My mother has a massive poster of Callas outside her music school, which has been there for over 15 years. When I got the role, she said, ‘I knew Maria Callas would be a part of our lives one day.’ She is still so excited and trying to support and help me through this new experience.”

All of this is to say Papadopoulou is counting the seconds to finally showing “Maria” in her home country. “She is an icon in Greece and people have been waiting to see the film,” she says. “I’m really proud of what we achieved and can’t wait to hear what my people think.”