Breaking News: Angelina Jolie Recalls First Opera Lesson for Maria: ‘I Took a Deep Breath and Just Cried’ (Exclusive)

The actress previously said she spent seven months in vocal training in order to portray opera legend Maria Callas

Angelina Jolie faced challenges finding her singing voice for her role in Maria.

In a Good Morning America interview with Michael Strahan airing Thursday, Nov. 21, the Oscar-winning actress, 49, discussed her transformation into Maria Callas, the late American opera singer beloved for her iconic vocals.

Strahan, 52, asked Jolie to elaborate on describing her opera lessons as “therapy” in a clip shared exclusively with PEOPLE.

We all don’t realize that different things that happen to us in our life — I know you’ve been through many things — we hold them in our body,” Jolie said. “Everything is just locked somewhere to help us keep going. And so to really sing, and sing very fully, you have to unlock all of that.”

She continued, “So my first lesson, I took a deep breath and just cried… and then left!”

In Maria, directed by Pablo Larraín (Jackie), moviegoers will hear Jolie’s vocals blended with real-life recordings of Callas’ singing. The actress previously said she spent about seven months in vocal training to prepare for her performance.

Jolie told Variety in October, the singing lessons turned out to be the “best therapy I’ve ever had.” She added, “Honestly, I think I would tell a lot of people before you try therapy and spend too much time there, go to singing class.”

“It helped me a lot,” the mom of six explained. “There’s something primal about finding your own voice within your own body. It brings up certain emotions that you may have not wanted to confront, and there’s no way to sing at your full voice and your full emotion without confronting your feelings and your limitations.”

Jolie also revealed to The Hollywood Reporter back in August that she had long lost her confidence in singing after an ex of hers was “not kind” to her about how she sounded.

So I just assumed I couldn’t really sing,” Jolie said. “I’d been to theater school, so it was weird that it even had an effect on me. I just kind of adapted to this person’s opinion.”

The star said it “took me getting past a lot of things to start singing,” and, to her surprise, she found out she is a soprano.

“I thought I had a low voice my whole life. I was explaining [to the singing instructor] that my voice is deeper, and he said, ‘No, you’re actually a soprano,’ ” she told THR. “And probably something happened. Your voice changes when you go through different things in your life. So that was a shock. That was very strange.”

Maria is in select theaters Nov. 27, then on Netflix Dec. 11.