Jessica Chastain, 40, is an American actress and film producer who also happens to be one of Hollywood’s hottest red heads. How’s that for a triple threat, eh?
As many of these stories tend to begin, Chastain was born in a small town near Sonoma, California; not exactly a breeding ground for future Hollywood starlets. But the acting bug bit Chastain early at the age of seven and we’re all lucky it did.
IN 1998, she made her professional stage debut as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet. The play helped her land an audition for the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City where she was accepted and even granted a scholarship funded by Robin Williams.
In 2004, Chastain made her television debut on the ill-fated Dark Shadows, The WB network’s 2004 pilot remake of the 1960s gothic soap opera. Just based on that sentence alone, I think you can guess the series never quite made it. In 2008, Chastain made her film debut in Jolene, with her performance earning praise from notable critics at the time.
Chastain’s real breakthrough came in 2011 when she appeared in a whopping six released, earning widespread acclaim for several of them. These films included Take Shelter, Coriolanus, The Tree of Life, The Help, Wilde Salome and Texas Killing Fields. Her turn in The Help wound up earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. One year later, Chastain was nominated for Best Lead Actress thanks to her work in Zero Dark Thirty. From obscure California town to a two-time Academy Award nominee? Not a bad rise.
More recently, Chastain has been seen in Interstellar (2014), The Martian (2015), The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016) and Miss Sloane (2016).
