The life of Jessica Chastain seems impossibly glamorous. One of Hollywood’s leading actresses, she’s also married into Italian aristocracy.
But for her latest role, the Oscar winner prepared by working as a carer to understand her character.
“I really studied her and thought about her situation,” she says. “I thought about the money she would make; where and how she lived. But it never felt like research.
“Working at the day centre, I was helping residents on and off the bus and making them lunch, so it felt like living the character rather than preparing for a role.”
Jessica’s new film Memory tells the story of Sylvia, a social worker whose life is changed by meeting Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), who has early onset dementia, at a school reunion. A friendship develops as alcoholic Sylvia tries to forget her past while Saul attempts to remember his.
“Memory is a very low-budget, independent film,” Jessica says. “We had to do whatever we could to save money; I shopped for my wardrobe at Walmart and did my own hair.
“The daycare residents you see in the film and Sylvia’s co-workers are real people who live and work in the centre I worked at to prepare for the role.”
Award-winning director Michel Franco kept things real in other ways, too, by turning a scene at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting into a genuine AA session.
“The first day of shooting was tough,” Jessica says. “Although we had actors there, it was a real AA meeting. There was a lot of trauma and sadness around the high rate of women who have suffered violence and sexual violence in their lives.
“I found myself creating Sylvia’s history and her trauma in my mind, but then having to try to forget it because that’s what she is trying to do. That was challenging.”
The film is certainly a departure from Jessica’s roles so far, which have included playing country singer Tammy Wynette in miniseries George and Tammy and her Oscarwinning turn as a TV evangelist in 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
“If there’s a role I’m told maybe isn’t right for me, that’s the one I will take a second look at,” she says. “When I was starting out at Juilliard [drama sch
