Jessica Chastain

Shortly before graduating from Juilliard, 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.[18] She relocated to Los Angeles and started auditioning for jobs.[18] She 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.[19] In her television debut, The WB network's 2004 pilot remake of the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, she was cast as Carolyn Stoddard.[20] The pilot was directed by P. J. Hogan, but the series was never picked up for broadcast.[20] Later that year, she appeared as a guest performer on the medical drama series ER playing a woman she described as "psychotic", which led to her getting more unusual parts such as accident victims or mentally ill.[18][19] She went on to appear in such roles in a few other television series from 2004 to 2007, including Veronica Mars (2004), Close to Home (2006), Blackbeard (2006), and Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005–2006).[21][22][23][24]

Chastain at the 2010 Mill Valley Film Festival

In 2004, 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] Also that year, she worked with Playwrights Horizons on a production of Richard Nelson's Rodney's Wife as the daughter of a troubled middle-aged film actor. Her 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] While working on the play, she was recommended by Nelson to Al Pacino, who was looking for an actress to star in his production of Oscar Wilde's tragedy Salome.[18] The play tells the tragic story of its titular character's sexual exploration. In the play, Salome is a 16-year-old, but Chastain, who was 29 then, was cast for the part.[27] The play was staged in 2006 at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, and Chastain later remarked that it helped bring her to the attention of several casting directors.[27][28] Writing for Variety, the critic Steven Oxman criticized her portrayal in the play: "Chastain is so ill-at-ease with Salome, not quite certain whether she's a capable seductress or a whiny, wealthy brat; she doesn't flesh out either choice".[28]

Chastain made her film debut in 2008 as the title character in Dan Ireland's drama Jolene, based on a short story by E. L. Doctorow inspired by Dolly Parton's song "Jolene".[29] It follows the life of a sexually abused teenager over the course of a decade. Chastain's performance was praised by a reviewer for the New York Observer, who considered her as the only notable aspect of the production.[30][31] She won a Best Actress award at the Seattle International Film Festival.[32] In 2009, she had a minor role in Stolen (2009), a mystery-thriller film with a limited theatrical release.[33][34] Also in 2009, she played the part of Desdemona in The Public Theatre production of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, co-starring John Ortiz as the title character and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago.[35] Writing for The New Yorker, Hilton Als commended Chastain for finding "a beautiful maternal depth" in her role.[36]

In 2010, 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.[37] She shared her role with Helen Mirren, with the two actresses portraying the character at different phases of her life.[37] They worked together before filming to perfect the voice and mannerisms of the character and make them consistent. Chastain took classes in German and krav maga, and studied books about the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and Mossad history.[37] William Thomas of Empire termed the film a "smart, tense, well-acted thriller", and noted that Chastain "pulses with strength and vulnerability" in her part.[38] She also 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.[39]

Chastain at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in 2011, where her film Coriolanus premiered

After struggling for a breakthrough in film, Chastain had six releases in 2011, and received wide recognition for several of them.[18][40] The first of the roles was as the wife of Michael Shannon's character in Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter, a drama about a troubled father who tries to protect his family from what he believes is an impending storm. The film was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and critic Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph noted how much Chastain's supporting part aided the narrative.[41] In Coriolanus, an adaptation of the Shakespearian tragedy from actor-director Ralph Fiennes, Chastain played Virgilia.[42] Her next role was opposite Brad Pitt, as the loving mother of three children in Terrence Malick's experimental drama The Tree of Life, which she had filmed in 2008.[43][44] Chastain signed on to the film without receiving a traditional screenplay from Malick, and she improvised several scenes and dialogues with Pitt.[45] She 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.[45] The film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival to a polarized reception from the audience, although it was praised by critics and won the Palme d'Or.[46] Justin Chang of Variety termed the film a "hymn to the glory of creation, an exploratory, often mystifying [...] poem" and credited Chastain for playing her part with "heartrending vulnerability".[47]

Chastain's biggest success of the year came with the drama The Help, co-starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Emma Stone, which was based on Kathryn Stockett's novel of the same name. Chastain played Celia Foote, an aspiring socialite in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, who develops a friendship with her black maid (played by Spencer). Chastain was drawn to her character's anti-racist 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.[48] The Help earned $216 million at the box office to become Chastain's most widely seen film to that point.[49][50] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times praised the chemistry between Chastain and Spencer, and Roger Ebert commended her for being "unaffected and infectious".[51][52] The ensemble of The Help won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Cast and Chastain received her first Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category, in addition to BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG nominations in the same category, all of which she lost to Spencer.[7][53][54]

Chastain's final two roles of the year were in Wilde Salomé, a documentary based on her 2006 production of Salome,[55] and the critically panned crime-thriller Texas Killing Fields.[56] Chastain's work in 2011, especially in The Help, Take Shelter and The Tree of Life, gained her awards from several critics' organizations.[57][58][59] Two of Chastain's films in 2012 premiered at the 65th Cannes Film Festival—the animated comedy Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted and the crime drama Lawless.[60] In the former, which marked the third installment of the Madagascar series, Chastain voiced Gia the Jaguar with an Italian accent.[61] With a worldwide gross of $747 million, the film ranks as her highest-grossing release.[62][50] In Lawless, based on Matt Bondurant's Prohibition-era novel The Wettest County in the World, Chastain played a dancer who becomes embroiled in a conflict between three bootlegging brothers (played by Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, and Jason Clarke).[63] The film received generally positive reviews, with Richard Corliss finding Chastain to be filled with "poised, seductive gravity".[64][65] In an experimental biopic of the author C. K. Williams, entitled The Color of Time (2012), directed by the New York University students of actor James Franco, Chastain played the mother of the young Williams.[66][67]

Chastain at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival where two of her films—Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted and Lawless—were screened

A short part that Chastain had filmed in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder (2012) was edited out of the final film, and due to scheduling conflicts, she dropped out of the action films Oblivion and Iron Man 3 (both 2013).[68][69][70] She 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.[71] Chastain was initially reluctant to accept the role, fearing the high anxiety she had faced during her early stage performances.[71] She ultimately agreed after finding a connection to Sloper, saying: "she's painfully uncomfortable and I used to be that".[71] The production was staged at the Walter Kerr Theatre from November 2012 to February 2013.[72] Brantley was disappointed with Chastain's performance, saying that she was "oversignaling the thoughts within" and that her delivery of dialogue was sometimes flat.[72] At the box office, it emerged as a sleeper hit.[73]

Kathryn Bigelow's thriller Zero Dark Thirty marked Chastain's final film release of 2012. The film tells a partly fictionalized account of the decade-long manhunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks. Chastain was cast as Maya, an emotionally hardened CIA intelligence analyst who helped kill bin Laden. The difficult subject matter made it unpleasant for Chastain to film.[74] She suffered from depression while working and once walked off the set in tears because she was unable to continue.[74] Chastain was unable to meet the undercover agent on whom Maya was based and she relied on the screenwriter Mark Boal's research.[74] Zero Dark Thirty received critical acclaim but was controversial for scenes of torture that were shown providing useful intelligence in the search for bin Laden.[75][76] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Chastain played Maya "like a gathering storm in an indelible, implosive performance that cuts so deep we can feel her nerve endings".[77] Roger Ebert made note of Chastain's versatility, and favorably compared her ability and range to that of actress Meryl Streep.[78] For her performance, Chastain won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama and earned Academy, BAFTA and SAG nominations for Best Actress.[7][79][80]

Chastain next took on the lead role of a musician who is forced to care for her boyfriend's troubled nieces in the horror film Mama (2013). She was attracted 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.[20] The critic Richard Roeper considered her performance as proof of her being one of the best actors of her generation.[81] During the film's opening weekend in North America, Chastain became the first performer in 15 years to have leading roles in the top two films (Mama and Zero Dark Thirty) at the box office.[82] She then starred as the titular character of a depressed woman who separates from her husband (played by James McAvoy) following a tragic incident in the drama The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013), which she also produced.[83] The writer-director Ned Benson initially wrote the story from the perspective of Rigby's husband, then wrote a separate version from Rigby's perspective on the insistence of Chastain.[84] Three versions of the film—Him, Her, and Them—were released.[84][85] It did not find a wide audience,[86] but the critic A. O. Scott praised 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".[87]

Chastain at an event for The Martian in 2015; the film ranks as one of her highest-grossing releases

Chastain appeared in three films in 2014. She played the eponymous protagonist in Miss Julie, a film adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 play of the same name, from director Liv Ullmann.[88] It tells the tragic tale of a sexually repressed Anglo-Irish aristocrat who wishes to sleep with her father's valet (played by Colin Farrell).[89] Chastain was attracted to Ullmann's feminist take on the subject.[90] The film only received a limited theatrical release.[91] While filming Miss Julie in Ireland, Chastain received the script of Christopher Nolan's science fiction film Interstellar (2014).[92] With a budget of $165 million, the high-profile production, co-starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, was filmed mostly using IMAX cameras.[93][94] Chastain was cast as the adult daughter of McConaughey's character; she was drawn to the project for the emotional heft she found in the father-daughter pair.[95] Drew McWeeny of the entertainment website HitFix took note of how much Chastain stood out in her supporting part.[96] The film grossed over $696 million worldwide to emerge as Chastain's highest-grossing live-action film.[50][93]

Chastain's final release of 2014 was the J. C. Chandor-directed crime drama A Most Violent Year. Set in New York City in 1981, the year in which the city had the highest crime rate, the film tells the story of a heating-oil company owner (played by Oscar Isaac) and his ruthless wife (Chastain).[97] In preparation, Chastain researched the period and worked with a dialect coach to speak in a Brooklyn accent.[98] She collaborated with costume designer Kasia Walicka-Maimone to work on her character's wardrobe, and contacted Armani who provided her with clothing of the period.[98] The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle described Chastain's portrayal as "the embodiment of a nouveau riche New York woman of the era", and Mark Kermode, writing for The Guardian, found Chastain "terrific" in a part inspired by Lady Macbeth's character.[99][100] She received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for the film.[101] For her work in 2014, the Broadcast Film Critics Association honored Chastain with a special achievement award.[102]

In 2015, Chastain took on the part of a commander in Ridley Scott's science fiction film The Martian. Starring Matt Damon as a botanist who is stranded on Mars by a team of astronauts commanded by Chastain's character, the film is based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name. 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.[103] The Martian became her second film to gross over $600 million in two consecutive years.[50][104] Chastain next starred as a woman who plots with her brother (played by Tom Hiddleston) to terrorize his new bride (played by Mia Wasikowska) in Guillermo del Toro's gothic romance Crimson Peak. She approached the villainous part with empathy, and in preparation read graveyard poetry and watched the films Rebecca (1940) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).[103] Del Toro cast 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.[103][105] Conversely, David Sims of Slate praised her for portraying her character's "jealous intensity to the hilt".[106]

Chastain at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival

After playing a series of intense roles, Chastain actively looked for a light-hearted part.[107] She found it in the ensemble fantasy film The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016), which served as both a sequel and a prequel to the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman. She was drawn to the idea of playing a female warrior whose skills were on par with those of the male lead character, but the film was poorly received.[107][108][109] She then starred as the title character, a lobbyist, in the political thriller Miss Sloane, which reunited her with John Madden.[107][110] Chastain read the novel Capitol Punishment by Jack Abramoff to research the practice of lobbying in America, and met with female lobbyists to study their mannerisms and sense of style.[111] Hailing her as one of the best actresses on the planet, Peter Travers commended Chastain for successfully drawing the audience into Sloane's life, and Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called her performance "a tour de force of rhetorical precision and tightly coiled emotional intensity".[112][113] Chastain received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama for her performance.[114]

Also in 2016, Chastain launched a production company named Freckle Films, headed by a team of female executives.[107][115] She began 2017 by serving as the executive producer and providing the narration for I Am Jane Doe, a documentary on sex trafficking.[116] In an effort to work with more female filmmakers, Chastain starred in two projects directed by women—Niki Caro's The Zookeeper's Wife and Susanna White's Woman Walks Ahead.[117] In the former, an adaptation of Diane Ackerman's non-fiction book of the same name, she co-starred with Johan Heldenbergh as the real-life Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński who saved many human and animal lives during World War II.[115][118] The film received mixed reviews, but Stephen Holden took note of how Chastain's "watchful, layered performance" empowered the film.[119][120] Woman Walks Ahead tells the story of the 19th-century activist Catherine Weldon, who served as an adviser to the Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull prior to the Wounded Knee Massacre. She 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.[121]

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 (2017). She took on the part due to her desire to work with Sorkin, whose writing she admired.[122] Instead of relying on Bloom's public persona, Chastain met Bloom to explore her character's flaws and vulnerabilities. She also researched the world of underground poker and interviewed some of Bloom's customers.[122] Peter Debruge hailed her role as "one of the screen's great female parts" and credited its success to both Chastain's "stratospheric talent" and Sorkin's script.[123] She received her fifth Golden Globe nomination for it.[124] In 2018, she hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and voiced the virtual reality production Spheres: Songs of Spacetime.[125][126] She had filmed a part in Xavier Dolan's ensemble drama The Death & Life of John F. Donovan, but her scenes were deleted from the final cut as Dolan found her role incompatible to the story.[127]

Chastain next took on the role as an evil alien in the superhero film Dark Phoenix (2019), which marked the twelfth installment in the X-Men film series, due to its focus on female characters.[128] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian considered it to be "a waste of her talents", and the film registered poor box office returns.[129][130] In It Chapter Two, a sequel to the 2017 horror film It, based on Stephen King's novel, she played the adult Beverly Marsh (a woman in an abusive marriage), sharing the role with Sophia Lillis. Filming proved challenging for Chastain, as director Andy Muschietti preferred the use of practical effects over CGI; one particular scene required her to be covered in 4,500 gallons of fake blood.[131][132] It received generally favorable reviews, with Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard finding her "suitably sad and sepulchral" in her part.[133][134] The film grossed over $470 million worldwide.[135]

Chastain next starred in and produced the action film Ava (2020), written and initially set to be directed by Matthew Newton, who has a history of alleged domestic violence. Following backlash against her for agreeing to work with him, Newton was replaced with Tate Taylor.[136][137] Boyd van Hoeij of The Hollywood Reporter bemoaned that Chastain's talents as an action star had been wasted in an underwhelming film.[138] The film went on to become a successful video on demand release, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [139]

Chastain was set to make her West End theatre debut in 2020 with an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House at the Playhouse Theatre.[140] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the play was postponed to an undisclosed date.[141] Chastain and Andrew Garfield will star as the televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, respectively, in the drama The Eyes of Tammy Faye; and she will reunite with Ralph Fiennes in The Forgiven, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne.[142][143] For The 355, a female-led spy film, Chastain and her co-stars Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, and Lupita Nyong'o pitched the idea to prospective buyers at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival; it was eventually picked up by Universal Pictures and produced by Chastain and Simon Kinberg.[144]

Among her other acting commitments, Chastain will star alongside Eddie Redmayne in The Good Nurse, a thriller about the pursuit of serial killer Charles Cullen, and portray country singer-songwriter Tammy Wynette in the biographical miniseries George and Tammy.[145][146][147] As producer, she will reunite with Octavia Spencer in a comedy film, for which she negotiated a higher salary for Spencer.[148][149] Chastain will also serve as executive producer for an adaptation of Alice Feeney's thriller novel His & Hers.[150]