Jessica Michelle Chastain was born on March 24,1977 and is an American actress and producer.
105 Facts About Jessica Chastain
2.
Jessica Chastain was a recurring guest star in several television series, and took on roles in several stage productions.
3.
Jessica Chastain received Academy Award nominations for playing an aspiring socialite in the period drama The Help and a CIA analyst in the thriller Zero Dark Thirty.
4.
Jessica Chastain received further acclaim for playing strong-willed women in the dramas A Most Violent Year, Miss Sloane, and Molly's Game, and the television miniseries Scenes from a Marriage.
5.
On Broadway, Jessica Chastain has starred in revivals of The Heiress and A Doll's House.
6.
Jessica Chastain is the founder of the production company Freckle Films, which was created to promote diversity in film, and is an investor in the soccer club Angel City FC.
7.
Jessica Chastain is vocal about mental health issues, as well as gender and racial equality.
8.
Jessica Chastain is married to fashion executive Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, with whom she has two children.
9.
Jessica Michelle Chastain was born on March 24,1977, in Sacramento, California, to Jerri Renee Hastey and rock musician Michael Monasterio.
10.
Jessica Chastain's parents were both teenagers when she was born.
11.
Jessica Chastain is reluctant to publicly discuss her family background; she was estranged from Monasterio, who died in 2013, and has stated that no father is listed on her birth certificate.
12.
Jessica Chastain was raised in Sacramento by her mother and stepfather, Michael Hastey, a firefighter.
13.
Jessica Chastain says her stepfather was the first person to make her feel secure.
14.
Jessica Chastain developed an interest in acting at age seven, after her grandmother took her to a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
15.
Jessica Chastain was a loner and considered herself a misfit in school, eventually finding an outlet in the performing arts.
16.
Jessica Chastain has described how she used to miss school to read Shakespeare, whose plays she became enamored with after attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with her classmates.
17.
Jessica Chastain later attended Sacramento City College from 1996 to 1997, during which she was a member of the institution's debate team.
18.
In 1998, Jessica Chastain finished her education at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and made her professional stage debut as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet staged by TheatreWorks, a company in the San Francisco Bay Area.
19.
Jessica Chastain later remarked that her participation in a successful production of The Seagull during her second year helped build her confidence.
20.
Jessica Chastain graduated from the school with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2003.
21.
Shortly before graduating from Juilliard, Jessica Chastain attended an event for final-year students in Los Angeles, where she was signed to a talent holding deal by the television producer John Wells.
22.
Jessica Chastain relocated to Los Angeles and started auditioning for jobs.
23.
Jessica Chastain initially found the process difficult, which she believed was due to other people finding her difficult to categorize as a redhead with an unconventional look.
24.
In 2004, Jessica Chastain took on the role of Anya, a virtuous young woman, in a Williamstown Theatre Festival production of Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard in Massachusetts, starring with Michelle Williams.
25.
Jessica Chastain's performance was not well received by the critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times, who thought that she "somehow seems to keep losing color as the evening progresses".
26.
The play was staged in 2006 at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, and Jessica Chastain later remarked that it helped bring her to the attention of several casting directors.
27.
Jessica Chastain's performance was praised by a reviewer for the New York Observer, who considered her as the only notable aspect of the production.
28.
Jessica Chastain won a Best Actress award at the Seattle International Film Festival.
29.
In 2010, Jessica Chastain starred in John Madden's dramatic thriller The Debt, portraying a young Mossad agent sent to East Berlin in the 1960s to capture a former Nazi doctor who carried out medical experiments in concentration camps.
30.
Jessica Chastain shared her role with Helen Mirren, with the two actresses portraying the character at different phases of her life.
31.
Jessica Chastain took classes in German and Krav Maga, and studied books about the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and Mossad history.
32.
Jessica Chastain appeared as Mary Debenham in an episode of the British television series Agatha Christie's Poirot, based on Agatha Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express.
33.
The film was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and critic Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph noted how much Jessica Chastain's supporting part aided the narrative.
34.
Jessica Chastain signed on to the film without receiving a traditional screenplay from Malick, and she improvised several scenes and dialogues with Pitt.
35.
Jessica Chastain considered her part to be "the embodiment of grace and the spirit world"; in preparation, she practiced meditation, studied paintings of the Madonna, and read poems by Thomas Aquinas.
36.
Jessica Chastain played Celia Foote, an aspiring socialite in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, who develops a friendship with her Black maid.
37.
Jessica Chastain was drawn to Foote's antiracist stand, and connected with her energy and enthusiasm; in preparation, she watched the films of Marilyn Monroe and researched the history of Tunica, Mississippi, where her character was raised.
38.
The ensemble of The Help won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Cast, and Jessica Chastain received Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, all of which she lost to Spencer.
39.
The film received generally positive reviews, with Richard Corliss finding Jessica Chastain to be filled with "poised, seductive gravity".
40.
Jessica Chastain instead made her Broadway debut in a revival of the 1947 play The Heiress, playing the role of Catherine Sloper, a naive young girl who transforms into a powerful woman.
41.
Jessica Chastain was reluctant to take the role, fearing the anxiety she had faced during her early stage performances.
42.
Jessica Chastain ultimately agreed after finding a connection to Sloper, explaining: "she's painfully uncomfortable and I used to be that".
43.
Ben Brantley of The New York Times was disappointed in Jessica Chastain's performance, writing that she was "oversignaling the thoughts within" and that her delivery of dialogue was sometimes flat.
44.
Jessica Chastain was unable to meet the intelligence analyst on whom her character was based, so she relied on the research done by the film's screenwriter Mark Boal.
45.
Jessica Chastain took on the lead role of a musician who is forced to care for her boyfriend's troubled nieces in the horror film Mama, directed by Andy Muschietti.
46.
Jessica Chastain was drawn to the idea of playing a woman drastically different from the "perfect mother" roles she had previously played, and she based her character's look on the singer Alice Glass.
47.
Jessica Chastain then starred as the titular character of a depressed woman who separates from her husband following a tragic incident in the drama The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, which she produced.
48.
Scott praised Jessica Chastain for "short-circuit[ing] conventional distinctions between tough and vulnerable, showing exquisite control even when her character is losing it, and keeping her balance even when the movie pitches and rolls toward melodrama".
49.
Jessica Chastain played the titular character in Miss Julie, a film adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 play of the same name, from director Liv Ullmann.
50.
Jessica Chastain was drawn to Ullmann's feminist take on the subject.
51.
Jessica Chastain played the adult daughter of McConaughey's character; she was drawn to the project for the emotional heft she found in the father-daughter pair.
52.
Jessica Chastain collaborated with the film's costume designer to work on her character's wardrobe, and contacted Armani which provided her with clothing of the period.
53.
Mark Kermode of The Observer found Jessica Chastain to be "terrific" in a part inspired by Lady Macbeth's character, and Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle described her portrayal as "the embodiment of a nouveau riche New York woman of the era".
54.
Jessica Chastain received a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress nomination for it.
55.
In 2015, Jessica Chastain took on the part of a commander in Ridley Scott's science fiction film The Martian.
56.
Jessica Chastain met with astronauts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johnson Space Center, and modeled her role on Tracy Caldwell Dyson, with whom she spent time in Houston.
57.
Jessica Chastain next starred as a woman who plots with her brother to terrorize his new bride in Guillermo del Toro's gothic romance Crimson Peak.
58.
Del Toro cast Jessica Chastain to lend accessibility to a part he considered "psychopathic", but Peter Debruge of Variety found her "alarmingly miscast" and criticized her for failing to effectively convey her character's insecurity and ruthlessness.
59.
Jessica Chastain found it in the ensemble fantasy film The Huntsman: Winter's War, which served as both a sequel and a prequel to the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman.
60.
Jessica Chastain was drawn to the idea of playing a warrior whose abilities were on par with those of the male lead, but the film flopped both critically and commercially.
61.
Jessica Chastain next starred as the titular character, a lobbyist, in the political thriller Miss Sloane, which reunited her with John Madden.
62.
Jessica Chastain read the novel Capitol Punishment by disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff to research the practice of lobbying in America, and met with female lobbyists to study their mannerisms and sense of style.
63.
Jessica Chastain received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama.
64.
Also in 2016, Jessica Chastain launched the production company Freckle Films, headed by a team of female executives.
65.
Jessica Chastain was interested in portraying a role that young girls could look up to for inspiration, and provided off-screen inputs to avoid a white savior narrative.
66.
Jessica Chastain portrayed Molly Bloom, a former skier who ran a high-profile gambling operation that led to her arrest by the FBI, in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut, Molly's Game.
67.
Jessica Chastain took the part due to her desire to work with Sorkin, whose writing she admired.
68.
Jessica Chastain researched the world of underground poker and interviewed some of Bloom's customers.
69.
Jessica Chastain reteamed with Andy Muschietti in It Chapter Two, the sequel to his 2017 horror film It, based on Stephen King's novel.
70.
Jessica Chastain played the adult Beverly Marsh, sharing the role with Sophia Lillis.
71.
The film received favorable reviews, with Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard finding Jessica Chastain to be "suitably sad and sepulchral" in her role.
72.
Under Freckle Films, Jessica Chastain produced and starred in the action film Ava, written and initially set to be directed by Matthew Newton, who has been accused of domestic violence.
73.
Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain starred as the televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in the biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
74.
Jessica Chastain acquired the rights to Faye's life in 2012, and produced the film under her company Freckle Films.
75.
Jessica Chastain worked with the music producer Dave Cobb to record seven songs for the film's soundtrack.
76.
David Fear of Rolling Stone found Jessica Chastain to be the "only reason to see this curiously tepid biopic" and praised her for rising above the script to humanize Bakker.
77.
Jessica Chastain won the Academy Award for Best Actress, Critics Choice Award and SAG Award, in addition to a Golden Globe nomination.
78.
Also in 2021, Jessica Chastain agreed to Scenes from a Marriage, a gender-switched remake of Ingmar Bergman's 1973 Swedish miniseries of the same name for HBO, for its subversion of stereotypical portrayal of women.
79.
Jessica Chastain received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries; her second nomination at that year's ceremony.
80.
Jessica Chastain reteamed with Ralph Fiennes in The Forgiven, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne.
81.
Jessica Chastain then took on a brief role as Maryanne Trump in James Gray's period film Armageddon Time.
82.
Jessica Chastain worked closely with Loughren and attended nursing school to prepare for the part.
83.
Jessica Chastain lost weight to play Wynette toward the end of her life.
84.
Jessica Chastain won another SAG Award and received a Golden Globe nomination for it.
85.
Jessica Chastain returned to Broadway theatre, playing Nora Helmer, an unhappy housewife, in Jamie Lloyd's 2023 revival of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House, which will run for 16 weeks at the Hudson Theatre.
86.
Jessica Chastain received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
87.
Jessica Chastain identifies as a feminist, and has often spoken out against the discrimination faced by women and minorities in Hollywood.
88.
Jessica Chastain penned an essay on gender imbalance in the industry for a December 2015 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
89.
At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where she served as a jury member, Jessica Chastain bemoaned the passive portrayal of women in most films.
90.
Jessica Chastain has complained about a lack of female film critics, which she believes hinders a gender-neutral perspective on film.
91.
Jessica Chastain is a vocal advocate for equal pay in the workplace, and turns down offers of work whose salaries she finds unfair.
92.
Jessica Chastain spoke out in support of actress Michelle Williams, who was paid less than her co-star Mark Wahlberg for the 2017 film All the Money in the World; a gesture which Williams said led to greater awareness of the issue and a donation worth $2 million to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.
93.
In 2013, Jessica Chastain lent her support to the Got Your 6 campaign, to help empower veterans of the United States Army, and in 2016, she became an advisory-board member to the organization We Do It Together, which produces films and television shows to promote women empowerment.
94.
In 2020, Jessica Chastain became an investor in a Los Angeles-based franchise for the National Women's Soccer League.
95.
Jessica Chastain has campaigned for access to affordable reproductive health care for women, and in 2017, Variety honored her for her work with Planned Parenthood.
96.
In 2022, Jessica Chastain traveled to Kyiv in Ukraine during Russia's invasion of the country.
97.
Jessica Chastain visited a children's hospital and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and head of the Presidential Administration Andrii Yermak.
98.
Jessica Chastain specializes in portraying emotionally grueling roles and is drawn to parts of strong but flawed women.
99.
Jessica Chastain considers herself to be a "shy" person, and in 2011 said that she enjoys domestic routines like dog-walking and playing ukulele, rather than partying.
100.
Jessica Chastain has cited the actress Isabelle Huppert as an influence, for managing a family, while playing "out-there roles" on screen.
101.
Jessica Chastain is an animal lover, and has adopted a rescue dog.
102.
Jessica Chastain was a pescatarian for much of her life; following health troubles she began practicing veganism.
103.
Jessica Chastain is an investor in Beyond Meat, a meat substitutes company.
104.
Jessica Chastain won an Academy Award in the Best Actress category for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and has been nominated two more times: Best Supporting Actress for The Help and Best Actress for Zero Dark Thirty.
105.
Jessica Chastain was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for A Doll's House.