Jessica Chastain

Biography of Jessica Chastain

Jessica Chastain was born on March 24, 1977 in Sacramento, California, United States.

Son of vegan chef Jerri Renee Chastain and rock musician Michael Monasterio. Her parents were teenagers when she was born and she had no further relationship with her father.

She grew up with his mother and his stepfather, Michael Hastey, a firefighter. She had two sisters and two brothers. Her sister, minus Juliet, committed suicide in 2003 after years of drug addiction.

She attended El Camino Fundamental High School in Sacramento.

She entered the AADA (American Academy of Dramatic Arts) and in 1998 after completing her education she made his professional stage debut as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

She auditioned for New York's Juilliard School, was admitted, and received a scholarship funded by actor Robin Williams. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003.

She appeared on television playing small roles in series such as Law and Order: Trial by Jury, Veronica Mars, Close to Home, Blackbeard or Agatha Christie's Poirot, among others.

She made her film debut in 2008 starring in the drama Jolene, for which she won the Seattle International Film Festival Award for Best Actress. A year later she was part of the cast of Stolen and in 2010 ofThe Debt.

During 2011 she was seen in movies like The Help, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, The Tree of Life, Wilde Salome and Texas Killing Fields.

She played the role of Maya, a CIA officer, in Zero Dark Thirty (2012), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. For her performance, she received the Golden Globe and a second Oscar nomination, both in the Best Actress Category. The following year she starred in Mama, Salomé and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.

In 2014, she starred in lead roles in actress/director Liv Ullmann's Miss Julie, in the sci-fi film Interstellar, one of the highest-grossing films of the year, and in A Most Violent Year.

She was Commander Melissa Lewis in Ridley Scott's sci-fi feature film The Martian (2015). In that same year she starred in Crimson Peak directed by Guillermo del Toro.

She subsequently appeared in The Huntsman: The Winters War (2016), Miss Sloane (2016), The Zookeeper's Wife(2017), Woman Walks Ahead (2017), This Changes Everything (2018), Dark Phoenix (2019) and Ava (2020).

She acted as Tammy Faye Bakker in the biographical drama The Eyes of Tammy Faye, based on the story of Tammy Faye Bakker.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021. Chastain was awarded the 2022 Oscar in the Best Leading Actress category.

A feminist and strong advocate for equal pay in the workplace, she rejects job offers whose wages she considers unfair.

She was a pescetarian (vegetarians who include seafood in her diet) for a long time and finally due to health problems she became a vegan. Additionally, she is an investor in Beyond Meat, a meat substitute company.

In 2012, she began a relationship with the Italian count Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, an executive of the Moncler fashion brand, whom she married on June 10, 2017. The following year, they were the parents of a daughter, Giulietta, by surrogacy. In 2020 they had a second daughter.