Jessica Chastain ('04 Carolyn Stoddard)

[Zahir]

She has a new movie out, The Debt, in which she plays the same role as Helen Mirren.  I just wrote a review and here it is:  http://zahirblue.blogspot.com/2011/08/debt-review.html

As a bit of trivia, her next movie is Texas Killing Fields, and her female co-star is none other than Chloe Grace Moretz!  

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Helen Mirren: Proactive role drew her to 'The Debt'
(She discusses Jessica Chastain.)

[michael c]

for miss chastaine it looks like it turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise that the 04 series was not picked up by the network.

if it had and she was tied to the show via contract she could not have gone on to what is looking like a very successful film career.

[Lydia]

But what opportunities would the '04 series have generated for Ms. Chastain?  Only those people who know the trick of crossing over into parallel time can say for sure.

[Midnite]

Chastain is also 1 of 4 featured covers of the current issue of LA Times Magazine.  The series is "Dreamgirls-- Four Stars on the Rise."

The article (p. 47):  Scene Stealers

The 4 covers:  LA Magazine September 2011

(Jessica is the oldest of the 4.)

[madscntst]

I haven't ever gotten the chance to see the '04 DS pilot, but I have been seeing the name Jessica Chastain everywhere this year.  she sure seems to have had a great year!!  It just so happened that I saw two movies last weekend that both featured Jessica.

One was The Tree Of Life, which I rented from Netflix.  Hmm, I've heard this film is pretty divisive, and I guess I can now be counted in the category that didn't like it.  It is VERY abstract, and while I kind of got the point of what it was trying to convey, I just didn't find myself buying into it at all- thought it was pretentious, one-note, and rather depressing.  That said, Chastain was one of the best things about the film- playing a warm and loving mother to her three young sons.

The other film was Take Shelter, which I saw in the theater.  This one was much more my speed.  It is about an average blue-collar family man who suddenly starts having apocalyptic visions of a terrible storm coming.  But are these prophecies, or a symptom of the mental illness that he knows runs in his family?  But it's really not a horror film, but more of a psychological character study.  Chastain plays his wife, and she shows much more range here and she really is fantastic (as are the others in the cast).  As an indie film, it's a little more slow-moving than some films, but that didn't bother me.  So this gets a thumbs-up from me.

I haven't even seen The Help, but I've heard that she is also great in that one, as well.  So, congrats to her on all these great performances, and here's to many more!  And yeah, it's interesting to wonder whether she would've been helped or hurt if she had done say 5 seasons of DS- on the one hand, it might've been harder for her to do other things while doing DS, but on the other hand it's taken several years for her to gain this amount of visibility without it, so who knows??