Angelina Jolie says she wanted to be a funeral director on 'Tonight Show'

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Angelina Jolie may be a licensed pilot and an award-winning actress, but talk shows make her nervous, she told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

"I get very uncomfortable," she said. "And I haven't done one for like a decade."

Jolie, 49, confronted her fears to discuss her new film Maria, and her production of the Broadway show, The Outsiders, which won her a Tony Award.

"I was thinking what it is to be an outsider," she told Fallon. "And I think that's just, to be somebody who's comfortable with other people maybe not understanding who you are, or knowing what you do," she said. "Or you don't feel as understood or connected, but you know who you are, and you're okay with that."

Maria, which is now playing in theaters, presented a new challenge for Jolie.

"I'd never sung before," she said. "Everybody's got something that makes them, you know, this is not something I can do, and I was pretty sure that was one of the things, I can't sing."

But her performance has already earned her widespread recognition. She is set to be honored at the Palm Springs International Film Awards.

Jolie said, too, that before she found acting, she'd wanted to be a funeral director.

"My grandfather died, and I remembered thinking this is not how they should be," she told Fallon. "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."

"It's my fallback career," she added.

Maria will stream on Netflix Dec. 11.