Angelina Jolie wanted to be a funeral director before she turned to acting
By Amarachi Orie, CNN
(CNN) — Angelina Jolie may have done pretty well in the movies and on stage, but acting was not actually her first pick when considering professions.
The Golden Globe, Oscar and Tony Award winner revealed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Thursday that before taking to acting she had studied to become a funeral director.
When asked, “Why? How?” by Fallon, Jolie joked, “Doesn’t it make sense though?” before addressing the question more seriously.
“My grandfather died and I remembered thinking, this is not how they should be. This should be a celebration of life –- and since I’m not afraid of death and I was comfortable with it, I thought, this would be a great career path for me,” she said.
“I could, like, make this better. I could do a thing here,” she added, before joking, “It’s my fallback career.”
The 49-year-old then addressed other rumors about her alternative careers.
Asked whether it’s true that she considered becoming a pilot, Jolie said, “Yes, I’m a pilot.” Jolie gained her pilot’s license in 2004, according to reports.
She added that her son Maddox was also now a pilot.
However, Jolie vehemently denied rumors that she had considered doing stand-up comedy, saying, “That is definitely a no.”
“I could deal with a funeral. I could deal with, with 10,000 feet in the air, but no,” she added before pointing at Fallon and saying, “What you do terrifies.”
Jolie spent months taking vocal lessons to portray legendary opera singer “Maria Callas” in her latest project, the biopic “Maria.”
“I’d never sung before,” Jolie said on the “Tonight” show, adding that she was “pretty sure” it was one of the things she couldn’t do. “I can’t sing.”
She said she had to learn to how to sing and, to quell her nervousness, she had a “great plan” at the start of filming.
“I thought, I know what I’ll do. I’ll – It’ll be a fun, like, start-of-the-movie gift. I’ll just buy everybody earplugs,” she said, before admitting, “But I didn’t, I had to sing.”
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