Angelina Jolie is one of the only real stars left — as she’ll prove at the Venice and Toronto film festivals

“I wouldn’t be an actress today,” Angelina Jolie said just a few years ago.
“When I was starting out, it wasn’t as much of an expectation to be as public, to share so much,” she further explained in an interview.
The year 2024 is turning out to be a rebuttal to herself, as the Season of Jolie gets going in earnest. One of the most famous women in the world, with 24-karat mystique and an Oscar to her name — one of the only real stars left, frankly, in a culture swimming in YouTube personalities, TikTok banshees and “Love Island” celebs — she rises to the dramatic occasion with not one, but two, significant projects: the cresendo-scaling pic “Maria,” premiering at the Venice Film Fest this week, and also “Without Blood,” a film she wrote and directed, which she brings to Toronto right after (an occasion that will also have her accepting an award at the TIFF Tribute gala, happening at the Fairmont Royal York the same night as her premiere).
Both projects give the 49-year-old an opportunity to sink into deeper waters than she’s given us in a while, acting-wise (“Eternals” was her last foray onscreen), and rounds out a year that’s seen the megastar shoring up her multi-portfolio. Back in May, for one, she won a Tony for producing “The Outsiders” on the Great White Way. Just the other week, she proved her style ROI when Tom Ford Beauty announced her as the face of its Runway Lip Color, the brand’s first ever celebrity face.
“An inveterate trailblazer,” the announcement blasted, zeroing in, moreover, on the non-dilettante features of this progeny of Hollywood.
“She goes beyond what the role of an artist can be, parlaying her influence through her humanitarian work, with over 20 years in the field, focusing on refugees and human rights.”
A riff, alas, on the familiar Angelina trajectory, as Jolie-watchers know too well: from her wild child, blood vial-wearing, Billy Bob days to her status now as a Gaia goddess and mother of six. We’ve been with her for all the zigs and the zags.
That time she won a Golden Globe for “Gia” and at the after-bash held at the Beverly Hilton, still dressed in her designer gown, she jumped into the pool, pulling a reporter in with her. Her “Girl, Interrupted” era. The kiss with her bro! The tabloid quake that was “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Her life-changing trip to Cambodia. Maddox and Pax and Zahara and Shiloh and Knox and Vivienne. That time she wrote a shocking op-ed for the New York Times in which she explained that she had elected to undergo a preventative double mastectomy to minimize her risk of developing breast cancer, an admission that sparked the “Angelina Jolie effect” around similar screening. “The Leg.” That dress. Her daddy issues. “Maleficent,” baby. The mother of all breakups that was her split with Bradley (a split that continues to spur painful echoes).
In the here and now, it is “Maria” — a film about opera’s greatest, most tragic figure, Maria Callas — that has Oscar prognosticators thinking it might be Angelina’s turn again for an awards season stroll.
It certainly seems to have all the ingredients. For one, she actually sings in the movie — showing the kind of labour that has previously rewarded other stars (took six months for her to master the “musical map” of Callas). Moreover, “Maria” director Pablo Larraín is rounding out his unofficial trilogy of illustrious women with this flick, i.e. Princess Diana (as captured by Kristen Stewart in 2021’s “Spencer”) and Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman in the earlier “Jackie”). Two films — both of which delivered Oscar noms for their leads.
Summing up the power of Jolie, Larraín recently told Vanity Fair: “This is the greatest diva of the 20th century, and who could play that? I needed an actress who would naturally and organically be that diva, carry that weight, be that presence. Angelina was there.”
After all, Maria Callas was not called La Divina for nothing.
A woman who “became the sum of the tragedies that she played onstage,” as per Larraín. And yeah, as one superfan tweeted recently: “Only a diva would understand another diva. Go cry in the ocean, haters.”
As someone who thinks that Angelina’s performance as Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart” is criminally underrated, I cannot wait.
As for her visit to Toronto, it marks the fourth time at Toronto International Film Festival. The last, in 2017, was for the film “First They Killed My Father,” which memorably brought Ang to the red carpet with all her kids. The whole brood! The first, she was here supporting her ex, for “The Assassination of Jesse James.” Pandemonium accompanied the latter, if I recall. Total. A moment in time in the ongoing story of one of our greatest of stars.