I added to the gallery a bunch of new photo stills of Jessica Chastain in the upcoming movie ‘355’, as well as changing some with bigger size and better quality and untagged.

December 8, 2021   Claudia

“The 355” star Jessica Chastain details for Carlos Bustamante the scariest stunt she performed while shooting the film. Plus, Chastain shares why her favourite aspect of the film was working with other actresses who also own the film.

December 8, 2021   Claudia

The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in which Jessica Chastain portrays the campy televangelist of the ’70s and ’80s, Tammy Faye Messner, marked multiple firsts for the two-time Oscar nominee. Notably, this was the first time she had to act through heavy prosthetics and the first time she took on a heavy singing role. That second part was a little more anxiety-producing than the first.

Luckily, there was a simple solution for her nerves. “My preparation for singing was bourbon. I’m not even gonna lie,” Chastain says on EW’s The Awardist podcast. “I was so scared.”

The night before pre-recording her vocals with Dave Cobb, the Grammy-winning songwriter and producer who worked on Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s A Star Is Born, Chastain felt like she was losing her mind. “I’d never done that before, and I was like, ‘I need a drink because I’m so freaked out,'” she says.

“It was [for] medicinal purposes,” she jokingly adds, “but that’s actually what really helped me get beyond it.”

Directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick), The Eyes of Tammy Faye chronicles Tammy’s early years meeting her future husband Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), their rise to becoming televangelist stars of The PTL Club, their fall after Jim was convicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy, and Tammy’s public redemption in the aftermath.

Tammy was someone who “ministered through song,” Chastain says. “On that first note, she’s calling up to Jesus. She’s at an 11 from the moment she starts singing the song, and she just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and louder. For a shy, reserved person, it’s a nightmare. But I had to do it.”

Chastain thinks of herself as the kind of actor who puts herself in “an uncomfortable place” because it forces you to “tread new water” and “navigate something you’ve never done before.” After The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Chastain is now doing a full-fledged musical, a genre, she admits, that made her the most uncomfortable as a performer.

She now takes the lead of country singer Tammy Wynette opposite Michael Shannon’s George Jones in the George and Tammy TV series currently filming in North Carolina.

“We have 31 songs we’re singing,” Chastain says. “We did six weeks of rehearsals in New York. Then I went to Nashville and did 10 days straight working with [music producer] T Bone Burnett.”

No word yet on how much bourbon was required to calm her nerves for that.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is now playing in theaters.

December 7, 2021   Claudia

In a short period since blasting out of a cannon on the big screen in Terence Malick’s Oscar nominated and Palme d’Or-winning The Tree of Life in 2011, Jessica Chastain has quickly built a resume of playing strong willed women. Alas, some are Greek tragic heroes, who reach for the stars, only to fall short; Tammy Faye Bakker being one of them. She, along with her husband Jim Bakker, built PTL into a massive multi-million dollar earning evangelical television network, a solid amount he siphoned for personal use, ultimately serving close to five years in jail. Tammy Faye Bakker meant a lot of things to a lot of people: a soulful Christian singer, a sensitive preacher who reached across the aisle to recognize the plight of LGBT during the AIDS epidemic, as well as material for late-night talk show hosts in her ambitious fashion and make-up sense. Chastain yearned to get under her skin and tells us how she prepared for the role in the Searchlight movie and produced it.

DEADLINE: When did you get the desire to play Tammy Faye Bakker? Was it after seeing the documentary?
JESSICA CHASTAIN: It was definitely after the documentary, and I saw that around the time of Zero Dark Thirty press. I was jet-lagged somewhere, and I thought, wow. First of all, I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been made before as a film. She’s such an incredible character, but I think it was also that I was disappointed with how the media had told her story. And that Steve Pieters interview for me was such a radical act of love.

She really went against what the conservative evangelicals were saying at that time, and in some sense, the fear and the homophobia that was really prevalent in society across the board. I mean, the U.S. government wasn’t even talking about AIDS. So, what she did was so rebellious, such a radical act of love, and I wanted to celebrate that, and also, I think as an actress, I don’t think there’s a scarier part to play, because really, you know, your ass is on the line. The voice, the pitch is different, the accent is different. The singing, which is so embarrassing for me. I learned her songs and learned how to sing, you know. And then, also, this wonderful, ridiculous, camp quality that she loved and embraced. I mean, there’s so much in there that is just terrifying, but really, there’s a lot to tackle with this role.

Read the full article/interview in our press library.

December 7, 2021   Claudia

Jessica Chastain is hard to pin down. Her filmography so far includes sci-fi (Interstellar), drama (Scenes From A Marriage), thrillers (Zero Dark Thirty) and horror (Mama) – but with last year’s Ava and upcoming film The 355, she’s carving out a corner for herself as an action heroine.

A stylish spy movie with a stellar cast that also includes Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz and Sebastian Stan, The 355 takes inspiration from the code name of one of the first female spies for the United States during the American Revolution. It’s a passion project for Chastain – she pitched the idea to Simon Kinberg, after working with him on X-Men: Dark Phoenix, who became both writer and director for the project.

For Chastain, this was an opportunity to contribute something new to the female-led spy film canon. “I feel like the film industry has really got female spies wrong,” she tells Empire. “They’ve portrayed them as honeypots, and that’s not the reality of the situation. Women weren’t being used for their bodies, they were being used for their minds, which is a more interesting concept.”

The search for more challenging, expansive female roles could be, it seems, part of the reason for her genre-spanning career. “In the past seven years, I’ve really looked at the projects I’ve joined and the parts that I’ve played in terms of, ‘What difference am I making?’” she says. “‘How can I shape a conversation?’ I never really had the dream of being an action hero at all, but the reality is I’m excited to have 13-year-old girls and 13-year-old boys see women in these roles. It’s very important for society. We’ve moved against the status quo, and we’re creating our own narrative for it. This film is, in some sense, a political act.”

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November 25, 2021   Claudia

Kristen Stewart, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Dunst and Emilia Jones join The Hollywood Reporter for our full Actress Roundtable.

November 25, 2021   Claudia