“I like different characters. The world is not black and white” – The Irish Times

Around this time in 2022, when Jessica Chastain won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as disgraced television evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, Michel Franco began to worry. Chastain was set to star in her new film Memento. Some people involved in the Mexican director’s small independent production wondered how they would cope with the demands of an Academy Award-winning star. Other industry figures warned that a big name like Chastain, a two-time Oscar nominee, would likely turn down the project in favor of a bigger film.

Not only did Chastain show up, she also bought her costumes at Target in Nashville to help shape the vibe of Franco’s film. This is not a glamorous role. Her character works at a medical center and never wears makeup. The actor styled—or rather, anti-styled—his own hair every day.

“If I want to be pampered, I can go to the spa,” she noted when “Memento” was shown in Venice last fall. She also suggested Peter Sarsgaard as her co-star, a role for which he eventually won the Volpi Cup at the Italian city’s international film festival.

Sometimes an actor changes the script or story to suit himself. But the best way for this actor is to change himself to fit the script.

“I’ve always wanted to work with Peter,” says Chastain. “I did not hide my love for him as an actor. He is a real artist. Sometimes an actor changes the script or story to suit himself. But the best way for this actor is to change himself to fit the script. This is Peter. I see it in everything he does. He’s a werewolf. It’s a very low-budget film, so Peter winning Venice put it on the line. There is no doubt that even being considered for an award draws attention to a film like this.”

It’s easy to see why Franco’s twisted drama attracted a stellar cast. At the beginning of Memento, Chastain’s character, a recovering drug addict and single mother named Sylvia, reluctantly attends a high school reunion. She is immediately intimidated by the man who sits next to her and smiles, and becomes even more confused when he follows her home. The man, Saul (Sarsgaard), has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and lives under the care of his brother and niece. Sylvia mistakenly believes that Saul was one of several boys who raped her at school. She remains afraid of men: “I asked a repairwoman,” she tells a worker who comes to fix her refrigerator.

( Molly’s Game: Jessica Chastain Performs Scorsese’s Yellow Tutu )

This is an unlikely basis for subsequent tender and intense relationships. Saul’s life in the moment allows Sylvia to access hidden trauma. Emerging family secrets lead to dramatic scenes between Sylvia and her estranged mother (played by Jessica Harper).

“This movie blew me away,” says Chastain. “When it comes to acting, if there’s nothing at stake, is it worth doing? And this does not mean that there is mental or physical danger. What’s at stake is that you embarrass yourself. There may be many things at stake that pose no current danger. And this is the kind of film where, when I talk about certain scenes, I get emotional even though I don’t want to be emotional. “I’ve let it sink in to me in a way that can be uncomfortable.”

Franco’s cunning and nervous script plays with faulty memory through misdirections, vague motives and denials. One heartbreaking episode outside the bedroom door threatens to rewrite everything we thought we knew; other scenes explore the nature of care.

“The world is not black and white,” Chastain says. “Human beings are just shades of gray. Wonderful people do difficult and irresponsible things, and terrible people are tender and vulnerable in certain moments. I’ve never subscribed to the idea that characters have to be likable or attractive enough. This seems like a requirement from a Hollywood studio. But this is not in European cinema, which is my bread and butter, not in independent cinema and international cinema. Anything that goes against this stereotype makes you feel like you’re watching real people.

“This is not an industry where I can make one film a year and everything is fine, especially if I am interested in the films of Michel Franco.”

“There’s this idea that if you don’t know everything about a character, they’re somehow scary. That’s what a femme fatale is, right? She has too many secrets. She must be planning something really dangerous. I think women in particular need to be an open book where all their motives are crystal clear – they have no cards up their sleeves. But I think it’s already boring. “I watch films all the time that show all these old stereotypes being broken.” She is laughing. “I like all the different characters.”

Franco, the creator of the incest drama Daniel and Ana and the nightmarish social media bullying tragedy After Lucia, has equal appreciation for popular protagonists. In 2020, his gritty, dystopian “New Order,” pitting Mexico’s underclass against the 1 percent, came under fire for peddling racial stereotypes. “I’ve seen all of his films, and The New Order, his most controversial film, is definitely my favorite,” Chastain says.

“I like projects that maybe not everyone likes. I’m a water cooler guy. I like something that actually creates discussion. The new order is so shocking. The performances are great. I think it’s so frustrating because it feels like it’s happening. It’s amazing how he captures people as they start to climb over the walls. It’s so slow and takes so long. “I think it’s much scarier than trying to make an action thriller.”

( New Order Review: When Class Warfare Goes Wrong )

The last time The Irish Times spoke to Chastain, she spoke about her impoverished childhood in California. “I grew up with a single mother who worked really hard to put food on the table,” she said of family life in Sacramento. “We didn’t have any money. There were many nights when we had to go to bed without eating. It was a very difficult upbringing.” She added: “Because of my mother, I always try to think about how something should be for someone else.”

Accordingly, she has built a career on championing women, even when, like Tammy Faye Bakker or Tammy Wynette, whom she played in George and Tammy, a portrait of a country star’s turbulent marriage, those women fail to live up to feminist ideals.

Her path to escape from this sometimes unstable home life – she also had to struggle with drug addiction, and shortly before Chastain’s acting career took off with the suicide of her younger sister – went through Shakespeare. At 21, she played Juliet in the production of Romeo and Juliet in Mountain View, California; she used a monologue from the play to audition for the Juilliard School in New York, where, thanks to a scholarship funded by Robin Williams (who had reportedly seen every film Chastain made before his death in 2014), she became the first member of her family to enroll at university.

( Mads Mikkelsen: “I try to get into the character as quickly as possible and leave as quickly as possible” )

When she was 29, Al Pacino cast her as Salome; she was 37 years old when the film, written and directed by Pacino, was released. By that time, she had already been nominated for back-to-back Oscars for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty.

She maintains complete confidentiality regarding her family life; neither her husband Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo nor her children attend ceremonial events. “If I’m standing at the border patrol or getting my passport stamped and someone recognizes me, that’s for Zero Dark Thirty,” she says. “If it’s a cool movie buff, it’s Interstellar.” If it’s just someone on the street who loves movies – but only if I wear makeup that day, because I look different in the movies, you know – it’s probably Molly’s Game.

Since the beginning of her career, Chastain has been vocal about her commitment to equal pay, even when it meant turning her back on Marvel. Octavia Spencer, her star from The Help, spoke of Chastain’s horror at learning that Spencer earns significantly less than other actors. “I love this woman because she walks the walk and actually means what she says,” Spencer recalls. “She said, ‘You and I will be connected to each other. We will become a privileged nation and we are going to do the same; you will earn this amount.” Fast forward to last week, we are doing five times more than we asked for.”

In 2019, Chastain supported Michelle Williams when it was revealed that Mark Wahlberg, Williams’ co-star in All the Money in the World, was paid $1.5 million for reshoots, compared to Williams’ paltry $80 a day. (Wahlberg had already received eight times the amount Williams should have received for his participation in the Ridley Scott production.) “Jessica’s audience was much larger than mine, and she was not afraid to pick up a megaphone and be heard. And heard that she was,” Williams said in a speech in Washington, D.C., in which she also noted that Chastain’s broader campaign for equality led to a $2 million donation to the Time’s Up Legal Fund, which supports people who have been sexually harassed at work. .

“I recently read something Taraji said,” Chastain says, referring to Oscar-nominated actor Taraji P. Henson. “She started crying during the interview. She was talking about everyone’s assumptions about actors’ salaries. People say, “They make $10 million a movie.” I’ve never made $10 million in my life. This is madness. But even when there’s a lot of money, Taraji explained how it works: 50 percent goes to taxes; 30 percent of the proceeds goes to your team. I think this is not the same industry as it was in the past. It’s not financially sustainable—at least not for me or my family. This is not an industry where I can make one film a year and be okay, especially if the films I’m interested in are Michel Franco films, which don’t pay what most people expect. I work a lot because of this.”

Memory in cinemas from Friday 23 February.