Jessica Chastain has one rule: to work only with actors who are better than her. “If someone is much better than me, then of course everyone says: ‘Wow, you’re great.’ In fact, it makes my job so much easier with someone like that in my scene; I can just be there and revel in how good they are.”
Chastain is being very modest. This year sees the Juilliard-trained actress holding her own opposite such heavy hitters as Al Pacino, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave in a whopping nine films. But if you’re wondering why you have never heard of her before, you are not alone.
Although you may have spotted her on the arm of designer Peter Dundas in a sassy black number at this year’s Met Ball or resplendent in a canary-yellow Zac Posen gown as she climbed the steps to Cannes Grand Théâtre Lumière hand in hand with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, “Hollywood’s secret star” has worked back to back for the last four years, and only now are the fruits of her labour set for release and to undoubtedly catapult her straight into the A league.
“I love watching actors
who are completely involved
and they feel everything”
Cannes audiences were first to see her in this year’s Palme d’Or-winning The Tree of Life. Allegedly more than 30 years in the making, the film is director Terrence Malick’s magnum opus, a far-reaching contemplation of life, family and the origins of life, loosely tied to the story of three young boys growing up in the 1950s. Chastain plays their ethereally graceful mother Mrs O’Brien, wife to Brad Pitt’s harsh disciplinarian father. While critics will no doubt remark on Pitt’s extraordinary performance, which vanquishes any last smidges of “sexiest man alive” typecasting, it is Chastain who is sure to leave the longest lasting impression.
It was her first big film, and she calls it a baptism of fire. “It’s shocking to me that I got to play the part,” she says, still sounding slightly incredulous on the line from Los Angeles, “and even more shocking that Brad Pitt was going to be my husband and Sean Penn was going to be my son.”
One of the first to audition for the film, she watched all of Malick’s films, Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World, in chronological order to “get into the mood that is a Terrence Malick film”. She knew she wanted to work with him. “I didn’t care what the part was; I just knew that I wanted to be involved in one of his projects.”
Working without a script initially, she was asked to perform tasks like singing a baby to sleep or looking at someone with “love and respect” for her auditions. She got a few hints about what the character would be like. “I kept thinking she would be so beautiful to play, because I think for myself; I want to be this kind of person. To have her grace and compassion in life, I thought what a great experience that would be.”
After two months of meetings with the casting director, the producers and finally Malick, the director offered her the part. She agreed immediately, but Malick wanted her to read the script first. “It truly was a question, he didn’t want to presume that I would want to play the part until I had read the script, but of course he’s such an amazing film-maker, for me the opportunity to work, even to audition for him, that was fulfilling enough.”
It took her four hours to read the dense script when she received it. “I was crying through a lot of it. It’s so beautiful; I think it could be published,” she says. “A lot of the script was written in prose. There was dialogue but it was the kind of dialogue that could be spoken or it could be thought.”
Both in the audition and when filming began, Malick would ask the actors to do the scene first with dialogue, and then again without saying anything. “To me what I love so much is the inner life,” says Chastain. “I love watching actors who are completely involved and they feel everything. When you are not given the opportunity to say how you feel, you just have to be there and go through your subject,” she says. “You think your monologue as your inner monologue and the camera catches that. I think that that’s a beautiful thing that [Malick] does and I wish more directors would do stuff like that.”
Malick is renowned for going off-script, a trademark that serves him well, says Chastain. “The brilliant thing about Terry is that he doesn’t want to try to force a moment to happen, so he always will capture what actually is in front of him and that could be a mistake and he’ll love that. I think sometimes he gets more excited by mistakes than by the expectations of what it was.”
Working with Pitt was also a joy, says Chastain, particularly as there was no movie-star hoopla surrounding him. “He really showed up as an actor, which is what he is first and foremost. He’s amazing in this film and it is an absolute transformation for me,” she says. “He played this character who was closed off and was very different to who he is in real life. In between takes, he was the most funny, charming, caring person to be on set with. The boys absolutely loved working with him and they would throw a football back and forth between takes.”
She got to work with another charismatic star, Sam Worthington, on The Debt. “I love Sam,” she laughs. “It’s a seamless friendship that we have.” They play Mossad secret agents sent to hunt down a Nazi war criminal in the 1960s in the spy thriller.
It’s an action-packed role, with Chastain training in Krav Maga, the hand-to-hand combat fighting used by the Israel defence force. It was a new experience for her and very brutal but she found a novel approach. “I have history in dance training [so] I approached the fight scenes as though they were a dance. You have to count them out and your fight partner, in a way, is your dance partner. One move affects the other and if something is a little off then it is going to mess everything up.”
Another soon-to-be-released project is Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Fiennes and co-starring Vanessa Redgrave. With her classical training, Chastain says she has an affinity for Shakespeare and is happy to do anything Shakespeare-related, especially when coupled with the opportunity to work with Fiennes and Redgrave. “You just don’t pass that up,” she says solemnly.
She adores theatre, appearing in 2009 alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman in a production of Othello, as Desdemona. “That was really good for me to get back to theatre, because I had done so many films in a row that I needed to get back.” And she’s itching to get back onstage again. “I’m really dying to play Miss Julie, so maybe I’ll find a production of [August Strindberg’s] Miss Julie somewhere.”
“That was really good for me
to get back to theatre,
because I had done so many films in a row.”
For now, she’s learning about the other side of the film business, promoting all the films she’s made. She admits it’s a steep learning curve. “During the four years, all I really concentrated on was the work. Everything for me was about the work, and now this is the first time in my life that it’s about promoting the work.”
She’s looking forward to talking about all of her projects. “I like doing it because I have chosen films that I really believe in, that I loved from page one of the script; I loved the directors and the actors that I was working with, so for me to talk about them is exciting.”
Published in Vogue Australia August 2011
