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Jessica Chastain in Cannes
CANNES, France — Jessica Chastain is about to become the most famous actress that you don’t know.
She’s the belle of the ball at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, starring in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” and Jeff Nichols’ “Take Shelter.”
And while acknowledging that Malick is one of the world’s great artistic directors, she predicts that Nichols will have a similarly long and distinguished career.
“There are a lot of similarities between the two directors,” she said during an interview Sunday. “Both have distinct voices, both are artists, both use lots of nature in the movies, and both live outside of Hollywood and New York.” Chastain, however, declines to point out that both live in Austin. When pressed on the matter, she says that she doesn’t want to say where Malick lives but prefers to protect his privacy, even though it’s a matter of public record.
Both movies also share a producer: Sarah Green. And Green introduced Chastain to Nichols after working with her on “The Tree of Life.”
Chastain would not say whether Malick will show up for Monday’s premiere of “The Tree of Life.” Malick is apparently in Cannes, and might walk the red carpet. But everyone associated with the movie is keeping mum.
In “Take Shelter,” Chastain plays Samantha, the wife of Curtis (Michael Shannon), who is beset by very realistic nightmares involving natural disasters. Curtis becomes convinced that his family is in danger and builds an elaborate bomb shelter in his back yard. But Curtis doesn’t explain his paranoia to his wife until late in the movie.
In “The Tree of Life,” Chastain plays the wife of Brad Pitt’s character — and the voice of love and acceptance in opposition to her husband’s hard-nosed approach to life.
Chastain said that while the two directors share many similarities, their on-set approach was dramatically different, primarily because Nichols was facing a low-budget quick shoot while Malick had a more leisurely pace.
In fact, months after the shooting, Malick called up Chastain and asked whether she would go to a sound booth and do voiceover work for the film. “He sent me about 40 pages of script, and it was beautiful,” she said. But the phone call for the voiceover work came during a Thanksgiving weekend, while Chastain was visiting her parents in Northern California.
“When I was recording the voiceovers, no one knew who I was while I was doing it,” she says. But she realizes that’s about to change.
Besides “Take Shelter” and “The Tree of Life,” Chastain is also starring in three other upcoming movies. Two of them, in fact, are with Sam Worthington, the star of “Avatar.”
“I haven’t done any franchise movies, so my life hasn’t changed that much,” she says. “But you can tell what happens when you’re in that kind of movie,” she says, based on watching Worthington.
She made “The Debt” with Worthington and Helen Mirren before the release of “Avatar.” In “The Debt,” which is scheduled for release this summer, Chastain plays an Israeli Mossad agent sent of a mission to capture a Nazi surgeon.
But she is also starring with Worthington in “The Fields,” a psychological thriller. And during that filming, she says, she would eat dinner with Worthington and realize that “every eye in the restaurant was on him. I can’t imagine being in that position.”
Chastain also recently wrapped up work on “The Help,” based on the best-selling Kathryn Stockett novel about an insecure Southern lady who doesn’t fit in with the society dames in 1960s Jackson, Miss.
And she says that, for a change, she’s actually in an amusing role. “After seeing it, my agent came up to me and said, ‘Jessica, you’re actually funny!’ “
“The Help” is scheduled to open in August.
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