The actress opens up about her upcoming film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and television series, Scenes from a Marriage

In 2012, not long after Jessica Chastain wrapped Zero Dark Thirty, a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about the search for Osama Bin Laden that garnered the 44-year-old actress her second Academy Award nomination, she took a serious look at the Hollywood around her.

“I immediately saw there weren’t a lot of options for women, at least in terms of great characters that are different. Actresses were regulated to a single type,” says Chastain, talking via Zoom while on vacation with friends and family in Italy. Studying acting and repertory theater at Juilliard in New York had given her a wide breadth of choice roles, but, suddenly, she opened her eyes to see that the film world might be “a tad limiting in terms of what people were offering.”

It was around that time that Chastain stumbled on the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Narrated by RuPaul, it’s about the life of the late Tammy Faye Messner, a Christian TV personality, singer and evangelist often parodied for her marriage to Jim Bakker (who was later imprisoned for fraud and conspiracy), not to mention her over-the-top style, which included heavy makeup and a perpetual tan. Messner died in 2007 of colon cancer.

“I knew about Tammy from what I’d seen on Saturday Night Live, but I actually had never seen her give an interview until I watched the documentary,” Chastain says. “My impression from sketch television was that she cried all the time, she was a crook and always had mascara running down her face.”

But Chastain found herself particularly moved by the film and Messner’s message that “everyone is deserving of love,” she explains. So she called her agent and manager and bought the narrative feature film rights to the documentary herself.

Go ahead. Call it one of Chastain’s “crazy ideas,” she says. “But I have these ideas that we have to push against an old-fashioned way the film industry has worked.”

Read the full interview/article in our press library.

August 31, 2021   Claudia

Jessica Chastain’s whole body was shaking. She’d never been this nervous on a film set — not with the kind of anxiety that gave her trouble breathing.

What am I so afraid of? The thought reverberated in her head. She’d played a superhero so powerful she could rearrange the structure of matter. The ringleader of a high-stakes underground Hollywood poker game. A CIA analyst who took down Osama bin Laden.

But this was Tammy Faye Bakker, the infamous televangelist recognized more for her heavy makeup than the fact that her husband, Jim, stole millions from his own parishioners. To play her, Chastain would put on gobs of mascara and lip liner, adopt a thick Minnesotan accent and belt out songs about loving Jesus.

“I was scared the people were going to make fun of me,” the actor recalled of her on-set jitters. “And there’s going to be a lot to make fun of if I fail because it’s so out there. I’m swinging for the fences here.”

But that was the reality Bakker — who died in 2007 after a long bout with cancer — faced every day. Remembering the ridicule Bakker endured — and ultimately ignored — allowed Chastain to quell her panic: “You have to let go of your ego and wanting to look cool. This is connecting you to her.”

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” out Sept. 17, will mark the culmination of Chastain’s near-decade-long journey to bring Bakker’s story to the big screen. In 2012, while on the press tour for “Zero Dark Thirty,” she was switching through the TV channels in her hotel room when she stumbled across a documentary on Bakker. Chastain had seen the film — directed by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey in 2000 —- before, but on this night she connected with it on a different level.

So she secured the rights to the doc, which had the same name as the eventual feature film. She had yet to establish her production company, Freckle Films, but still found a home for the project at Fox Searchlight. The studio will debut the film next month at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the 44-year-old Chastain will receive the event’s Tribute Actor Award.

She has another movie playing at the festival — “The Forgiven,” a drama co-starring Ralph Fiennes — and also will appear in an HBO limited-series remake of Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage” beginning Sept. 12.

From her home in the countryside of New York, where only birdsong interrupted her speech, Chastain spoke to The Times about playing Bakker.

Read the full article/interview in our press library.

August 23, 2021   Claudia

Take a peek into the first photos of Jessica Chastain in “Scenes from a Marriage”, enjoy!

August 17, 2021   Claudia

As the 46th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (running September 9–18) moves forward in hybrid form with live events in Toronto as well as virtual screenings, Joana Vicente and Cameron Bailey, Co-Heads of TIFF, are adding another awards tribute to follow the already announced TIFF Ebert Director Award to Canadian auteur Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”). This year’s Actor Award goes to two-time Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, whose performance and makeup as a notorious televangelist in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (September 17, Searchlight), is picking up Oscar buzz. Michael Showalter’s long-delayed marital dramedy will make its world premiere at TIFF.

2021 Oscar-winners Sir Anthony Hopkins (Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Father”) and Chloé Zhao (Searchlight’s “Nomadland”) and nominated composer Terence Blanchard (Netflix’s “Da 5 Bloods”) all launched their Oscar campaigns at TIFF’s second annual Tribute Awards fundraiser. The year before, TIFF’s first Awards Gala honored eventual Oscar winners Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”) and Joaquin Phoenix (“The Joker”).

In a statement, Vicente cited such notable TIFF Chastain premieres as “The Debt,” “Take Shelter,” “The Martian,” “Crimson Peak,” and “Molly’s Game,” adding, “She is one of the most respected actors of her generation. Her recent portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker is a testament to her exceptional onscreen presence and talent.”

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” will track “the rise, fall, and redemption through the ’70s and ’80s of thick-lashed singing televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, who rose with her husband, Jim Bakker, from a humble beginnings to create the world’s largest religious broadcasting network and theme park.” Eventually, their heavy spending and financial improprieties brought down their empire.

Chastain will next be seen opposite Oscar Isaac in HBO’s “Scenes from a Marriage,” an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1970s miniseries. In 2022, she will be seen in “The 355,” an international spy thriller based on an original idea by Chastain for her production company Freckle Films. Chastain will shortly play music legend Tammy Wynette in the limited series “George & Tammy” opposite Josh Brolin.

In 2019, Chastain starred in the global hit sequel “It Chapter Two,” and, prior to that, in the X-Men franchise, “Dark Phoenix,” and Aaron Sorkin’s “Molly’s Game,” which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She has also starred in the critically acclaimed “A Most Violent Year,” “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby,” “Miss Julie,” “Interstellar,” and Terrence Malick’s Academy Award-nominated drama “Tree of Life,” “The Debt,” “Take Shelter,” “Zero Dark 30,” and “The Help,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Per TIFF, “the Government of Canada is planning to open its borders for non-essential travel for American citizens and permanent residents on August 9, 2021 and citizens of any country on September 7, 2021, assuming that the domestic epidemiologic situation remains favorable, and that visitors have been fully vaccinated with Government of Canada–approved vaccines (Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen – Johnson & Johnson -AstraZeneca/COVISHIELD) at least 14 days prior to entering Canada. Travelers must also meet the pre-entry test requirements; provide a digital copy of vaccination documents and COVID-19 information electronically through the ArriveCAN app prior to arrival in Canada; provide a quarantine plan and be prepared to quarantine in case border agents determine they do not meet the necessary requirements; be asymptomatic upon arrival; and participate in random COVID-19 testing.”

Meet these requirements and you can travel to Canada without having to quarantine, including the elimination of the three-night hotel quarantine policy. This allows TIFF to welcome a slice of its usual cadre of international press, industry, and talent back to the festival as permitted by the Canadian government.

Source

August 6, 2021   Claudia

There is something about Jessica Chastain in green that it’s wonderful. Probably the fact she is. Enjoy the addition to the gallery of HQ photos during the Chopard Trophy Photocall in Cannes.

July 10, 2021   Claudia

Jessica Chastain hit the carpet of Cannes Festival in a black Christian Dior Fall 2021 Haute Couture gown. Over 200 pictures have been added to the gallery, enjoy!

July 7, 2021   Claudia