Early Life
Born Jessica Michelle Chastain on March 24th, 1977 in the city of Sacramento, California, Chastain became interested in acting when she was just seven years old. This was after she saw a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Chastain began to act and put on performances with her friends. When attending High School in Sacramento at the El Camino Fundamental High School, performing arts became an outlet for her to find solace, comfort and expression. As a teenager, Chastain attended the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as part of a trip and became a huge fan of the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare.
Chastain attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1998 and made her first professional debut in a production of Romeo & Juliet as part of the theater company TheatreWorks. She starred as Juliet, and the performance led to her auditioning for New York City’s Juilliard School, where she was eventually granted a scholarship and began studying at the prestigious institution. She graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts.
Major Roles and Awards
Chastain has starred in a number of high-profile productions, often working with acclaimed directors such as Terence Mallick in 2011’s The Tree of Life and Christopher Nolan in Interstellar (2014). In 2011, she was nominated for both the academy award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Help, a film about an author seeking to write a book from the perspectives of black maids amidst the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Chastain then won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture and was nominated for the academy award for Best Actress for her leading role in 2012’s thriller Zero Dark Thirty about CIA analysts seeking to uncover extremist plots. 2014 saw Chastain nominated again for the Golden Globe Best Supporting Actress for her role in A Most Violent Year that she starred in alongside Oscar Isaacs. Following this, Chastain picked up a nomination for the Golden Globe Best Actress in a Drama for her appearance in 2016’s Miss Sloane where she played the powerful Washington DC lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane.
In 2017, she was nominated again for the same award for her role in director Aaron Sorkin’s debut feature, Molly’s Game. Based on a book of the same name, this was a dramatic retelling of the life of Molly Bloom, a former professional skier who subsequently became involved in the world of high-stakes poker. Other major appearances include Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012), Mama (2013), The Martian (2015), and It Chapter Two (2019).
Personal Life
In spite of being a high profile and upcoming name in both Hollywood and Broadway, Chastain prefers where possible to keep her professional and private lives separate. To this extent, Chastain tends to attend premieres and other red carpet events without a partner, in order to keep the media scrutiny to a minimum. She describes herself as reserved and shy and prefers a quiet life to attend opulent events and parties.
One area where Chastain is more outspoken is in the realm of animal rights advocacy. She has a rescue dog and, after eating a diet low in animal products for much of her life, now joins Beyoncé and Tabitha Brown in choosing to eat a vegan plant-based diet. She has gone on record as being an investor in the meat substitute company Beyond Meat, one of the most popular vegan meat substitutes on the market.
Relationships
Chastain had a long-running relationship with Ned Benson, who is best known for writing and directing the trilogy The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. This relationship ended in 2010. In 2012, she started dating the Italian aristocrat Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, a count of the Passi de Preposulo family. Preposulo is involved in the fashion brand Moncler as an executive. They currently live together in New York City.
Net Worth
Jessica Chastain has an estimated net worth of 40 million dollars.
