Jessica Chastain has made a name for herself – gaining Best Actress nominations along the way – playing strong women. She tells Dan Rookwood the real reason she feels compelled to choose those roles and why President-elect Trump could be a boon to feminism.
“That was Lauren Bacall’s chair,” says Jessica Chastain, indicating the floral-print slipper chair on the other side of her sitting room. “I bought it at an auction.”
Sat ballet-dancer straight, there is a look of Bacall-era classic Hollywood about Chastain. The 39-year-old is wearing a short black Prada dress with black opaque tights and black leather Prada ankle boots – quite the dramatic transformation from the wild riot of color on The Edit’s photoshoot. “I’m a California girl so I love color, but we’re in New York so we’ve got to adhere to the dress code,” she smiles.
The twice Oscar-nominated actress has recently finished remodeling the 3,200sq ft, four-bed corner apartment in a 19th-century building just off Central Park, which she bought last year for a reported $5.1m. For 10 years, it was home to composer Leonard Bernstein, who apparently wrote Westside Story in this very room. Chastain and her partner of five years, Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo (an Italian count who works for Moncler), have respected the history and grandeur of the place – the décor feels aristocratic; chandeliers hang from the double-height ceilings.
In an adjacent room a stylist is assembling rails of clothes, ready for a fitting to plan out Chastain’s wardrobe for public engagements over the next three months. The actress is about to embark on the campaign trail to promote her latest movie, Miss Sloane. In the Grisham-esque thriller, Chastain plays the titular Elizabeth Sloane, a formidable but much-criticized power player in Washington, fighting for a cause against a sexist and patronizing male-dominated governmental system.
Sound familiar? It’s timely subject matter. Our interview takes place 10 days before the Us presidential election, and Chastain, who has been vocal in her support of Hillary Clinton, is hoping not only that she beats Donald Trump but that she does so by a message-sending margin.
“If [Hillary] wins by a landslide, that tells the world that we are a country that doesn’t support racism, sexism or any other -ism, and we’re actually taking a huge stand against it,” she enthuses. “It would be incredible for girls everywhere to see that. But also I think [Trump] being so popular is really an example of why feminism is so important. Unbeknownst to him, he is bringing it all to the forefront, and I am very grateful to him for doing that. You have to look at the world in a positive way otherwise you just want to cry.”
(On election night, as adverts for Miss Sloane with the review quotes of “Gripping” and “Full of twists and turns” rolled during Cnn’s live coverage, Chastain Instagrammed a video of her split Tv screen with the caption: “Art imitates life. I may throw up tonight.”)
Chastain is doing her bit to show girls everywhere that women can be leaders. The actress toiled away as a relative unknown for seven years, before her Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination in 2012 for her portrayal of a brassy blond who befriends her black housekeeper in The Help. The following year she was back at the Oscars again, this time for Best Actress in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, in which she played a steely Cia operative who tracks down Osama bin Laden. Since then she has become one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading women and, though she has been careful not to be typecast, if there is a common thread that links her roles it is that she plays strong females – no wallflowers, no eye candy.
It is her duty, says the actress, to only say yes to roles that have substance. She turned down a megabucks blockbuster – she won’t say which – because the character was too passive. She was offered a lucrative lingerie campaign, which was tempting, but did not fit with her sense of responsibility as a role model to young women.
“If I can help create empathy and balance in society, I’m going to do whatever I can to tell stories that subconsciously create that,” says Chastain. “When I get a script that has the opportunity to create discussion and inspire young girls, I don’t want to say no to that. If something comes to me before it has financing and I can help get it made, I feel a responsibility in that. I just want to contribute.”
Earlier this year, she set up an all-female production company, Freckle Films, in part to help create more roles for women behind the camera as well as in front of it. “There are incredible movies with female protagonists, but I’m cautious to say everything’s better now because I see studios patting themselves on the back: ‘Look, I’ve got this film with diversity. I’ve got women in this.’ I think when you congratulate yourselves for diversity, that means nothing’s really changed.”
We are interrupted by Chaplin, Chastain’s three-legged rescue dog, who lollops over to say hello as tea is poured in a proper cup and saucer by Chastain’s assistant. Sugar? No, thank you, just a splash of milk. “Oh, I don’t think we have regular milk because I’m vegan,” the actress apologizes.
That vegan diet, she explains, is the main reason her skin – which won her a beauty contract as the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s Manifesto fragrance – looks so flawless. She has been vegan for 10 years; her mother, Jerri, is a vegan chef. “So much comes down to the food you eat and I eat a very clean diet,” says Chastain. “Being vegan has made a huge difference in my life.” She also swears by Sk-ii masks, which she sleeps in during long-haul flights to protect her skin, even though they make her look “like Jason from Halloween”.
It wasn’t always so. As a teen, she struggled with severe acne and had to be prescribed powerful drugs. She wore braces to straighten her buckled teeth and resented her pale skin, freckles and red hair. “I didn’t like looking different,” she says. “Being a redhead, you can’t fit into the group. I wanted to be blond so bad. I had really bad self-esteem and I asked my mom if I could dye my hair but she wouldn’t let me.”
Her hair color is inherited from her maternal grandmother, Marilyn, who was the person who first inspired her to take up acting and has championed her ever since – it was she who walked the red carpet with Chastain before her first Oscars. When Chastain first moved to Los Angeles in order to break into Hollywood, she was advised to go blond. She refused – it had taken a long time for her to feel comfortable in her own skin.
“I look at myself now and I look at myself when I left college [The Juilliard School in New York, where she was on a scholarship funded by the late Robin Williams]. I still feel awkward at times, but then I’m sure I probably auditioned terribly because I had such fear and doubt about myself. Not anymore.”
Now, of course, she embraces her coloring. “I called my company Freckle Films because it was something I used to hate about myself,” she says. “But I want to make movies about our differences as a society so that's why I called it that. Now, I celebrate it.” Would she ever consider cosmetic surgery? “Who knows? When I’m 50 or 60, I might. Some people think I’ve had a nose job. I’ve never had anything like that done, but I have no judgement of anyone that does.”
Chastain will turn 40 in March. Does she worry about roles drying up, as they do for so many Hollywood actresses after a certain age? She bristles. “When I read interviews about male actors, they aren’t asked these questions,” she says. “I feel – and please don’t take offence – but I feel that the media has a responsibility to not continue to ask them.” She’s right, of course.
“Maybe at some point I won’t be acting,” she offers. “Maybe I’ll be producing or directing or teaching at Juilliard.” Later, she adds: “I feel like something’s happening. I feel like a change will soon happen in my life. Maybe I won’t act for a few years. I’m happy, I’m content, but I could do something else for a bit.”
Is she talking obliquely about having children, perhaps? Chastain deflects the question. She keeps her private life private to protect her family from press intrusion. “I want people to be more interested in my work than my personal life,” she says. “I want to disappear into the characters I’m playing and not have the audience say, ‘Oh, she’s going through a divorce right now.’”
For the record, Chastain is nowhere near a divorce. She lives in New York partly so she can hop easily to La for work or to Italy to be with her boyfriend. They are spending Christmas together. “I have two weeks off from filming and we’re just going to go to Italy, drink wine, eat pasta and sleep all the time,” she says. “Heaven.”
Miss Sloane is out now (Us); February 10 (Uk)
