‘I like unexpected 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 portrayal of disgraced televangelist Tammy Faye Baker, Michelle Franco was worried. Chastain was to play a leading role in her new film, Memory. Some involved in the Mexican director’s small, independent production were wondering how they would cope with the demands of an Academy Award-winning star. Other industry figures warned that a big name like Chastain, who had been nominated for an Oscar twice before, would almost certainly be dropped in favor of a bigger film.

Chastain not only came: She also bought her costumes at a Target in Nashville to help shape the spirit of Franco’s film. This is not a glamorous role. Her character works in a care center and never wears makeup. The actress styles her hair every day – or, rather, in anti-styles.

“If I want to be pampered I can go to the spa,” she remarked when Memory was shown in Venice last autumn. He suggested Peter Sarsgaard as his co-star, a role for which he eventually won the Volpi Cup at the Italian city’s International Film Festival.

Sometimes an actor will change the script or story to fit himself. But the better way for the actor is to change himself according to the script.

“I’ve always wanted to work with Peter,” says Chastain. “I’ve made no secret of my admiration for who he is as an actor. He is a real artist. Sometimes an actor will change the script or story to fit himself. But the better way for the actor is to change himself according to the script. He is Peter. I see this in everything he does. He’s a shapeshifter. It’s a very low budget film, so Peter winning Venice put it on the map. There is no doubt that a film like this attracts attention even when it is considered for awards.

It’s easy to see why the famous actor was drawn to Franco’s complex drama. As the memory opens, Chastain’s character, a recovering addict and single mother named Sylvia, reluctantly awaits a high-school reunion. She is immediately intrigued by a man who is sitting near her, smiling, and becomes even more dismayed when he follows her home. A man named Saul (Sarsgaard) has been diagnosed with early dementia, and lives in the care of his brother and niece. Sylvia mistakenly believes that Saul was one of several boys who sexually abused her at school. She remains afraid of men – “I called a repair lady” she tells the worker who comes to fix her refrigerator.

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It’s an unlikely foundation for the tender, tense relationship to come. Living in Saul’s present allows Sylvia to access buried trauma. Budding family secrets in turn lead to dramatic scenes between Sylvia and her estranged mother (played by Jessica Harper).

“This movie appealed to a part of me,” says Chastain. “With acting, if there’s nothing at stake, is it worth doing it? And it doesn’t mean there’s any mental or physical danger. What’s at stake may embarrass you yourself. There are a lot of things that could be at stake that aren’t real threats. And it’s the kind of movie where, when I talk about certain scenes, I get emotional even though I don’t want to get emotional. I let it seep into me in a way that may be uncomfortable.”

Franco’s clever, jarring script plays with the faulty capacity of memory through misdirections, uncertain motivations, and denials. A heart-breaking scene outside the bedroom door threatens to rewrite everything we thought we knew; Other views examine the nature of care.

“The world is not black and white,” says Chastain. “Humans are just shades of gray. Amazing people do complex, irresponsible things and terrible people have tenderness and vulnerabilities at some points in their lives. I’ve never really stuck to the idea that characters have to be likable enough or attractive enough. This sounds like a Hollywood-Studio demand. But that’s not the case in European cinema – which is my bread and butter – not in independent cinema and international cinema. Anything that bucks that stereotype and makes you feel like you’re watching real people.

‘This is not the kind of industry where I can make one film a year and be fine, especially if the films I’m interested in are Michel Franco films.’

“There’s this notion that if you don’t know everything about a character they’re somehow scary. That’s what a femme fatale is, isn’t it? He has a lot of secrets. She must be about to do something really dangerous. I think women in particular are expected to be open books, where all their motivations are completely clear – they don’t hold any cards. But I think it’s getting worse. I see movies all the time that show all the old things being destroyed,” she laughs. “I like all the unexpected characters.”

Franco, creator of the incest drama Daniel & Ana and the nightmarish social-media bullying tragedy After Lucia, is equally appreciative of hard-sell heroes. In 2020, his gritty, dystopian New Order, in which Mexico’s underclass grew against the 1 percent, was heavily criticized for trading in racial stereotypes. Chastain says, “I’ve seen all of his movies, and New Order, his most controversial movie, is definitely my favorite.”

“I like projects that maybe not everyone is comfortable with. I’m a water cooler kind of guy. I love something that really creates a discussion. The new order is very shocking. The performances are great. I think it’s very disturbing because it seems like it’s happening. It’s amazing the way he films people as they start coming over the walls. It’s very slow, and it takes a lot of time to happen. I think it’s scarier than trying to make an action-thriller sequence.

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The last time the Irish Times spoke to Chastain, she talked about her impoverished childhood in California. “I grew up with a single mother who worked very hard to put food on our table,” she said of home life in Sacramento. “We had no money. There were many nights when we had to sleep without eating. It was a very difficult task to bring it together.” She added, “Because of my mother, I always try to think about what something should be like for someone else.”

Accordingly, she has built her career around championing women, even when, like Tammy Faye Baker or Tammy Wynette—whom she played in George & Tammy, a portrait of the country star’s turbulent marriage— Those women do not conform to feminist ideals.

Her path away from a sometimes uncertain family life – she also struggled with drug addiction and, shortly before Chastain’s acting career took off, her younger sister died by suicide – was through Shakespeare. When she was 21 she played Juliet in a 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 reportedly watched every of Chastain’s films before his death in 2014), she became the first cast member. became. His family has to go to university.

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When she was 29, Al Pacino cast her as Salomé; She was 37 when the film, written and directed by Pacino, was released. By then she had earned consecutive Oscar nominations for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty.

She remains extremely private about her home life; Neither her husband, Gian Luca Passi di Preposulo, nor their children attend red-carpet events. “If I’m on border patrol or getting my passport stamped and someone recognizes me, it’s Zero Dark Thirty,” she says. “If it’s a nice movie-loving guy. This is interstellar. If there’s someone on the street who loves movies – but only if I’m wearing makeup that day, because I look different in movies, you know – it’s definitely molly’s game.

From the beginning of her career, Chastain has been vocal in her commitment to equal pay, even when it meant saying no to Marvel. Octavia Spencer, her co-star in The Help, talked about Chastain’s fear when she learned that Spencer was earning significantly less than the other members of the cast. “I love that woman, because she’s walking the walk and she’s really talking the talk,” Spencer recalled. “He said, ‘You and I are going to band together. We’re going to be Preferred Nation and we’re going to make the same thing; you’re going to make that amount of money.’ “Fast forward to last week, we are doing five times what was asked for.”

Chastain fell behind Michelle Williams in 2019 when it was revealed that Williams’ similarly billed costar Mark Wahlberg in All the Money in the World was paid $1.5 million for reshoots compared to Williams’ $80 per day . (Wahlberg had already received eight times the amount to sign Williams for Ridley Scott’s production.) “Jessica had a much larger audience than I did, and she was willing to pick up the megaphone and be heard. Wasn’t afraid of. And heard that she was,” Williams said in a speech in Washington, D.C., in which she also said that Chastain’s broader campaign for equality led to a $2 million donation to the Time’s Up Legal Fund, which supports women’s rights at work. Supports victims of sexual harassment. ,

“I read something Taraji said recently,” Chastain says, referring to Oscar-nominated actor Taraji P. Henson. “She started crying during the interview. She was talking about everyone’s perceptions about actors’ salaries. People say, ‘They make $10 million on a movie.’ I never made 10 million dollars in my life. He is mad. But even with a lot of the money, Taraji explained how it works: 50 percent goes to taxes; 30 percent of gross earnings go to your team. This is not the industry I thought it was in the past. It’s not financially stable – not for me anyway, and not for my family. It’s not the kind of industry where I can make one movie a year and be fine, especially if the movies I’m interested in are Michel Franco movies, where the pay isn’t what most people expect. That’s why I work so much.”

Memory In cinemas from Friday, February 23