Actress Jessica Chastain earns her place in Hollywood’s celebrity A-list
SINCE being catapulted to the top of the A-list with two Oscar nominations, Jessica Chastain hasbeen unstoppable and she keeps on wowing Hollywood in a host of new movies.
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The term ‘quiet celebrity’ is an oxymoron of sorts and rarely applicable to a two-time Academy Award nominee.
Yet Jessica Chastain, whose name was barely recognised in casting meetings a few short years ago, now finds herself topping many major film studios’ wish lists when it comes to A-list projects.
And despite her yearning for a life lived in the background, she has inadvertently become a bona fide movie star.
“It’s weird. I wasn’t one of those kids at the dinner party who would go, ‘I want to sing a song!’ I’m a silent person, actually. I’m very shy; I prefer to listen than talk.”
She smiles, almost apologetically.
“It’s funny. My best friend is very outgoing – the life of the party – and everyone close to me is like that.
“They will lead the party on and I can sit there and enjoy it. I don’t have to be at the centre of it.”
Despite these protestations, Chastain is front and centre in Hollywood.
She garnered her first Oscar nod in 2012 for her supporting role in The Help and her next in 2013 for the lead role in Zero Dark Thirty, which also led to being named one of Time magazine’s ‘100 most influential people’ – a lofty title for an actor whose career began only four years earlier.
It would seem the 37-year-old’s best intentions to remain anonymous are failing miserably.
Her intense gaze breaks into laughter.
“Yes, that was unbelievable,” she nods.
“I was really surprised about Time and that it happened after my first year in movies, so I was like, ‘Wow! OK.’ It was a huge honour and especially that it was Gary Oldman who wrote the paragraph about me.
“But I don’t see myself as an influential person in the world; I see myself as someone who wants to be influenced. I’m very much a student in that way.
“This is all very surreal for me. I’m not comfortable with it yet.
“It’s crazy to think how many movies I’ve done since 2011 [15], so I’m still new to all of this.” She also bears another relatively new title, ambassador for the Yves Saint Laurent fragrance Manifesto, and is a regular fixture at red-carpet events.
“It’s not about, ‘Oh, look at me on the red carpet’, it’s about the dress,” she stresses.
“Photographers have said things like, ‘Why don’t you pose more?’ But I’m still very shy about that and I struggle with it.
“What I mean is, I’m excited to wear the dress, but I’m not there to be a model.”
When interviewing an actor devoid of any desire to be the focus of a story, the cat-and mouse dynamics between journalist and subject can prove to be a little off-kilter.
The push and pull of how much she will and won’t divulge present a few awkward moments as she explains the dilemma and contradiction of her chosen vocation.
“It’s really important for me to remain away from the spotlight. The reason I became an actress has nothing to do with celebrity.
“I know they’re connected but, for me, it’s not like that.
“The more famous I get will actually defeat why I love being an actress, because it’s about connecting to people, and really, really famous people get separated from society.”
A true chameleon, Chastain is every director’s dream.
She offers a blank canvas on which they can paint, be it her Mossad agent in a love triangle in The Debt or Zero Dark Thirty’s CIA operative, both fierce and model-chic in aviator shades.
In a very different role, she was almost unrecognisable as The Help’s 1960s sexy housewife.
In her new film, the sci-fi drama Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight films, Inception), Chastain makes a convincing scientist alongside co-stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway.
“I’m a sci-fi fan. 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favourite, but I also love Star Trek and Star Wars,” she says.
Is she endowed with a scientific mind? “Not at all,” she laughs.
“I was terrible in those subjects at school. I’m definitely the art student.
“My imagination was too big for my high school and I didn’t do well until I went to Juilliard.
That was a school that encouraged imagination.”
After graduating from New York’s The Juilliard School in 2003 with a bachelor of fine arts degree (made possible by a scholarship funded by Robin Williams), she moved to Los Angeles and began appearing in such TV shows as ER, Veronica Mars and Law & Order.
Serendipity stepped in when Al Pacino was looking for an unknown to star in his theatre production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, in 2006.
In 2008, she secured her first movie role in Jolene, playing the titular character. This would mark the beginning of gainful employment.
Clearly she’s not one to self-aggrandise; however, Chastain does admit to possessing some formidable skills, which she displayed in the debate team when she attended Sacramento City College, prior to Juilliard.
She sighs.
“I used to be really, really good. I won in negotiations and I was surprised I was good at it.
I don’t think I’d be good at it now.” She pauses.
“I was a lot tougher when I was younger; I feel like a completely different person than I was 15 years ago.”
But surely to sustain an acting career in the highly competitive, cutthroat world of Hollywood requires a hardy constitution? “No,” she says, shaking her head.
“I think just the opposite. You have to be really vulnerable to be in this position.
“You have to deal with a lot of rejection, but you surround yourself with people who are really tough, like agents.
“I have to be able to show up on set and be not tough but vulnerable, open and exposed.
I definitely have become way more sensitive than I was 15 years ago.”
Chastain grew up in Sacramento, California, raised by her mother and stepfather.
Close to her grandmother, whom she brought as her guest to the Oscars in 2012 and 2013, she says, “She took me to the theatre when I was a little girl.
I realised that I didn’t say, ‘I want to be an actress,’ but rather, ‘OK, this is what I am.’”
She stirs her cup of green tea.
“My grandmother is one of the most outgoing people – she’s one of those people that surround me that I was telling you about. She has such a zest for life.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t smile very much and she was always encouraging me to smile.
“Now when I see pictures of me as an adult and I’m smiling, I know that was from my grandmother.”
Another person who can entice a smile from this pensive actor is her boyfriend of two years, Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, an Italian-born executive for French fashion brand Moncler.
Gingerly dipping a toe in the waters of her romantic life, I ask her about him.
“I love his connection to history and his passion for Italy. I find that so inspiring.”
Does she see her future as a wife and mother some day? Perhaps with animals, to complete the picture?
“Yes, I hope to be a mother – it’s one of the most important things to me – but I don’t know how many kids.
“I have no idea what form motherhood will take, but all my friends tell me I try to mother them,” she laughs, “so I really hope it is in my future.
“I have a dog already … I love the idea of having a bunch of animals.”
Chastain is an avid animal lover and, unsurprisingly, she is also vegan.
“I was a vegetarian who ate fish, so I was a pescatarian for 15 years, but I wasn’t feeling so well and the doctors suggested I do a two-week vegan food delivery cleanse.
“I did it never intending to become vegan, but I felt so amazing and I had so much energy.
“Then, when I finished the cleanse, I went out to lunch and ordered the fish and the risotto, thinking, ‘Great, I’m off the cleanse’, and that night I felt sick again.
“I realised I have to be conscious of what my body tells me and if my body does better not eating certain foods.
“So, for the past eight years, I’ve been a vegan.”
When it comes to romance, she says, “I’m romantic in a practical kind of way, in the same way I keep the chaos on the screen – I don’t allow myself to get carried into something that would be bad for me in my personal life.”
Unusually level-headed, Chastain is an anomaly; an actor without any room for drama in her personal life.
“I think it’s important, especially for young ladies, to not allow a big personality or a big romantic gesture to bring them into a situation that might not be right for them.
“I believe romance is actually about being able to sit in a room with someone, not be on top of the Eiffel Tower, but just be reading a book and maybe even not speaking – just holding hands.
Chastain is known for playing emotionally gruelling roles and has several movies of this ilk coming out over the next year, including Miss Julie, A Most Violent Year and Crimson Peak.
Isn’t it time to lighten up a little? She nods in agreement.
“These films take quite a toll on me. I need to find something lighter.
“I need to do a comedy – and really soon.”
* Interstellar is in cinemas on November 6.
Follow Michele Manelis on Twitter @michelemanelis
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