This interview alongside this cover was published at Movieline, at their August catch-up from most interesting subjects of the month:

Jessica Chastain on Breakthroughs, Big Years and the Awards-Season Crash Course
By virtually any Hollywood standard, even if another film featuring Jessica Chastain weren’t released in 2011 after this week, she’d have already had a pretty phenomenally successful rookie year in the business.

It’s kind of staggering, really: Months after her vivid if vexingly underseen screen debut in Jolene, there was no missing Chastain on the Croisette as she and The Tree of Life stormed Cannes en route to the Palme d’Or. By the end of summer she was co-starring in America’s number-one film, The Help. And on Wednesday, her spy thriller The Debt finally reaches theaters, featuring Chastain as one-third of a Mossad team dispatched to capture one of WWII’s most notorious Nazi fugitives in ’60s-era East Berlin. (Helen Mirren plays her haunted character, Rachel Singer, in the present day.)

But The Debt commences a grand finale to die for: September brings Take Shelter, arguably the best of the batch, starring Chastain as the wife of a man (Michael Shannon) whose apocalyptic nightmares and visions threaten him and his family. Writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) crafts a near-perfect allegory of social and economic storms slowly suffocating the life from an average middle American family; the film succeeds in large part due to Shannon and Chastain’s performances as a couple witnessing the storm from the inside, expertly navigating the terrain between ’70s-tinged drama and timeless psychological horror.

Beyond that, Chastain has Al Pacino’s film adaptation of their stage collaboration Salome finally bowing at the Venice Film Festival, a role as a detective investigating a series of homicides in Texas Killing Fields, and closes out the year as the wife of Ralph Fiennes’s title character in the Shakespeare updating Coriolanus. Next year, look out for her opposite Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf in director John Hillcoat’s long-awaited adaptation of The Wettest County in the World — not to mention wherever awards are handed out, with Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help and Coriolanus all in various proximities to the center of the Oscar universe.

Chastain recently phoned up Movieline to talk about her astounding 2011 to date — and the whirlwind yet to come this fall.

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September 7, 2011   Luciana

Referred to by actor/director Al Pacino as his most personal project ever, the unconventional feature documentary “Wilde Salome” invites audiences into Pacino’s private world, as he explores the complexities of Oscar Wilde’s acclaimed play “Salome,” Wilde himself and the birth of a rising star in actress Jessica Chastain.

September 6, 2011   Luciana

As Hollywood stars go, Jessica Chastain has up til now been something of a quiet presence. Over the past months she’s been working with Hollywood greats including Terrence Malick, Al Pacino and Ralph Fiennes, but we’re only just starting to see the rather wonderful fruits of her work.

Chastain’s latest project, the Pacino-directed Wilde Salome premiered yesterday at the Venice film festival. She pretty much steals the show as the titular character, so for those feeling a bit out of the loop, here’s five things you don’t know about Ms Chastain – read the full interview in the September issue of Wonderland.

1. She’s a theatre geek.
“I’m the girl that goes to the theatre by herself or with friends. I was always the freckly, redheaded theatre nerd… I’ve never been the cool kid. I got teased mercilessly in elementary school and once I found my group of theatre friends I realized I do fit in somewhere.”

2. She likes hanging out in the kitchen:
“I love long-term cooking, the type that takes all day where you really smell it in the house, like roasting pears.”

3. She plays the Ukelele.
I used to play guitar and I realized when I started working and traveling so much that I wasn’t able to play anymore because I felt stupid carrying around a guitar case. With the Ukelele I could just stick it in my suitcase and play it in the hotel room.

4. She never wanted to be famous.
“I’ve always been the student, learning about being an actor, and becoming a better actor, so for me it’s about working with the masters of it. It’s not been about ‘This is the film where I’ll get famous.’ I’ve never thought like that.”

5. She’s a Scrabble champ.
“I’m so obsessed that during [the filming of] The Wettest Country in the World Tom Hardy and I would play two games at once on our iPads. Of course I always beat him, though he would deny that.”

Jessica has a spread at the current issue of Wonderland Magazine, and this was a preview of it. We’ll try to get scans for you asap. Thanks Lotta for the heads up!

September 6, 2011   Luciana

The Bienale Channel has just posted the video from bits of “Wilde Salome” press conference in Venice. Check it:

September 5, 2011   Luciana

Near 100+ HQ pictures of Jessica at Venice Festival was added to the gallery. Check it:

September 5, 2011   Luciana

I’ve posted before that Jessica had a spread at current issue of Dazed and Confused magazine. Thanks to awesome Rea we have now scans added to the gallery.

September 5, 2011   Luciana