Angelina Jolie's surprising back-up career has baffled the internet

Angelina Jolie is one of the most talked-about women in the world, and from her ongoing divorce from Brad Pitt, to her moving words about her six children, the 49-year-old never fails to make headlines.

It is her acting credits that make the most news, with the Academy Award winner returning to our screens this month with her new film, Maria.

The upcoming Netflix release is a powerful biopic, seeing Jolie star as famed opera singer Maria Callas, with the actress already earning an Oscar prediction and an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

However, despite her success, Jolie has explained that acting wasn't her original career plan. In fact, she trained for a very surprising job instead - a funeral director.

"Doesn't it make sense though?," Jolie explained of her former career choice in a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon.

"My grandfather died and I remembered thinking, this is not how they should be," Jolie explained. "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."

Jolie continued: "I could, like, make this better. I could do a thing here. It’s my fallback career."

This is not the first Jolie has spoken about her previous career choice, opening up about it previously to 60 Minutes reporter Bob Simon.

"It sounds like this very strange, eccentric, dark thing to do but in fact I lost my grandfather and I was very upset with his funeral," she previously explained. "And so we discussed, maybe there are ways where this whole idea of how somebody passes and how family deals with this passing and what death is, should be dressed in a different way. If this whole acting thing didn't work out that was going to be my path."

Well, that's that.