I love unlikable characters. The world is not black and white – The Irish Times

This time in 2022, when Jessica Chastain won the best-actress Oscar for her portrayal of disgraced television preacher Tammy Faye Baker, Michelle Franco was worried. Chastain was to star in her new film Memory. Some people involved with the Mexican director’s small, independent production were wondering how he would wrestle 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, was certain to drop out in favor of a bigger movie.

Not only did Chastain arrive: To help shape the feel of Franco’s film, she even bought her costumes at a Target in Nashville. It is not a glamorous role. Her character works in a care center and never wears make-up. The actor styles – or rather, anti-styles – his own hair every day.

“If I want to be pampered I can go to the spa,” she remarked when Memory was shown in Venice last fall. She also suggested Peter Sarsgaard as her costar, for whom she eventually won the Volpi Cup at the Italian city’s international film festival.

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

“I always wanted to work with Peter,” says Chastain. “I have not hidden my fandom of who he is as an actor. He is a real artist. Sometimes an actor changes the script or the story to fit himself. But the best way for an actor is to change himself to fit the script. He It’s Peter. I see that in everything he does. He’s a shape-shifter. It’s a very low-budget film, so Peter winning Venice put him on the map. No doubt even consideration for an award draws attention to such a film.

It’s easy to see why a stellar cast was drawn to Franco’s naughty drama. As Memory opens, Chastain’s character, a recovering addict and single mother named Sylvia, reluctantly awaits a high-school reunion. She is immediately startled by a man sitting next to her, laughing, and becomes even more dismayed as she follows him 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 sexually abused her at school. She remains afraid of men – “I asked for a repair woman” she tells the worker who comes to fix her fridge.

( Molly’s Game: Jessica Chastain does a yellow-pack Scorsese )

It’s an unlikely basis for the tender, fulfilling relationship that ensues. Saul’s living in the moment allows Sylvia to access buried trauma. Emerging family secrets in turn lead to dramatic scenes between Sylvia and her estranged mother (played by Jessica Harper).

Chastain says, “The movie hit a part of me.” “With acting, if there’s nothing at stake, is it worth doing? And that doesn’t mean there’s a mental or physical risk. What’s at stake might be that you embarrass yourself. There are so many things that There can be danger that isn’t real danger. And this is a film where, when I talk about certain scenes, I get emotional when I don’t want to be emotional. I allowed it to be internalized in me in a way that was uncomfortable. May be.â€

Franco’s sly, nervous script plays with misdirection, uncertain motivations and memory’s faulty faculty through denial. A heart-wrenching sequence outside the bedroom door threatens to rewrite everything we know; Other scenes examine the nature of caring.

“The world is not black and white,” Chastain says. “Humans are just shades of gray. Awesome people do complicated, irresponsible things, and horrible people have tenderness and, at some point, vulnerabilities in their lives. I’ve never held to the idea that characters have to be likable or attractive enough. . It sounds like a Hollywood-studio demand. But it’s not in European cinema – which is my bread and butter – independent cinema and international cinema. Anything for 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 be fine, especially if the films I’m interested in are Michel Franco films.”

“There’s this assumption that if you don’t know everything about the character, she’s somehow scary. That’s what a femme fatale is, right? She has a lot of secrets. She has to be something really dangerous. I think women especially are expected to be open books, where all their motivations are completely clear – they have no cards up their sleeve. But I think that’s wearing out. I see films all the time that show that all those old tropes are destroyed. has been.’ “I like all the characters I don’t like,” he laughs.

Franco, creator of the adultery drama Daniel and the nightmarish social media bullying tragedies Ana and Lucia, is equally adept at hard-sell heroes. His gritty, dystopian New Order in 2020, in which Mexico’s underclass rises against the 1 percent, was heavily criticized for trading in racial stereotypes. “I’ve seen all of his films, and New Order, his most controversial film, is definitely my favorite,” says Chastain.

“I like projects that might not suit everyone. I’m a water cooler kind of person. I like something that really creates a buzz. New Order is very shocking. The performance is great. I think it’s very unsettling because That it looks like it’s happening. It’s amazing the way those people start coming up against the walls. It’s very slow, and it takes a long time to happen. I think someone trying to make an action-thriller sequence It is much scarier than a person.

( New Order Review: When Class War Goes Bad )

The last time The Irish Times spoke to Chastain, she spoke about her poor childhood in California. “I grew up with a 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 go to bed without food. It was a very difficult upbringing.” “Because of my mother, I always try to think of how something should be for someone else,” she added.

Accordingly, she has built a career around championing women, even when, say, Tammy Faye Baker or Tammy Wynette—whom she played in George & Tammy, a portrait of a country star’s tumultuous marriage—are not women. Does not conform to feminist ideals.

She also struggled with drug addiction and, shortly before Chastain’s acting career took off, her younger sister’s death by suicide – came 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 one of Chastain’s films before his death in 2014), she became the first member. His family to go to university.

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

When she was 29, Al Pacino cast her as Salome; Pacino was 37 when the film, written and directed, came out. By then she had received her back-to-back Oscar nominations for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty.

She remains fiercely private about her home life; Neither her husband, Gian Luca Passi di Preposulo, nor her children attend red-carpet events. “If I’m at border patrol or getting my passport stamped and someone recognizes me, it’s for Zero Dark Thirty,” she says. “If it’s a cool film-nerd guy, it’s Interstellar. If it’s just a guy on the street who likes movies — but if I’m wearing make-up that day, because I look different in movies, you know – It’s Molly’s game, for sure.â€

Since the beginning of her career, Chastain has been vocal in her commitment to equal pay, even when it meant saying no to Marvel. Her costar Octavia Spencer from The Help spoke of Chastain’s horror that Spencer earned significantly less than other cast members. “I love that woman, because she’s walking the walk and she’s really talking the talk,” Spencer recalled. She said, “You and I are going to be tied together. We’re going to be the favored nations and we’re going to make the same thing; you’re going to make that amount. Fast-forward to last week, more than we asked for.” Doing it five times.

Chastain fell behind Michelle Williams in 2019 when it was revealed that Mark Wahlberg, Williams’ co-billed costar in All the Money in the World, was paid $1.5 million for reshoots compared to Williams’ $80 per day. (Wahlberg has already received eight times what Williams had to sign on for a Ridley Scott production.) The audience for “Jessica” was much larger than mine, and she wasn’t afraid to pick up the megaphone and be. Heard and heard she was,” Williams said in a speech in Washington, D.C., in which she also noted that Chastain’s extensive 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. has been done.

“I read something Taraji said recently,” says Chastain, referring to Oscar-nominated actor Taraji P. Henson. She started crying during the interview. She was talking about everyone’s perception of actors’ salaries. People say, “They make $10 million a movie.” I never made $10 million in my life. It’s crazy. But even with a lot of money, Taraji explained how it works: 50 percent goes to taxes; A total of 30 percent goes to your team. This is not the industry I thought of in the past. It’s not financially stable—not for me, anyway, and not for my family. It’s not an industry where I can make one film a year and be fine, especially if the films I’m interested in are Michel Franco films, where the pay isn’t what most people expect. I work a lot because of that.â€

memory In cinemas from Friday, February 23