In 2011, it might have seemed like Jessica Chastain emerged out of nowhere as a formidable actress, when she appeared in no less than five movies — including Best Picture nominees “The Help” and “The Tree of Life” — and scored her first-ever Oscar nomination. But Chastain worked for years to get to that point, acting in plays from a young age and attending the prestigious Juilliard School. “I struggled for so long to try to create a career,” she told the New York Times in 2017.
In the decade since her breakout year, Chastain has received acclaim for a variety of different roles — from her Oscar-nominated lead part in “Zero Dark Thirty” to her lauded supporting work in “A Most Violent Year” to even a superhero franchise with “X-Men: Dark Phoenix.” She’s worked alongside top filmmakers like Terrence Malick, Kathryn Bigelow, J.C. Chandor, Aaron Sorkin, Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott.
But Chastain has done anything but rest on her laurels. In 2021, she appeared alongside her longtime friend Oscar Isaac in the HBO limited series “Scenes from a Marriage” and scored some of her best-ever reviews for playing Tammy Faye Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” Chastain spent a decade researching the real-life televangelist and spent hours in the makeup chair to transform into Bakker. Her performance brought her the Oscar for Best Actress in March, 2022.
“This was much harder than anything else I’ve done,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “When you’re creating a character that is fiction, you can do whatever you want. The rules are basically in the script and then you add whatever ingredients you like. But with someone like Tammy … For me it was much harder because everyone knows who I am and this is a huge opportunity — they know my mannerisms, they know my voice — this is a huge opportunity for me to fail.”
Tour our gallery featuring Chastain’s 14 greatest performances so far in her career. We rank our choices from worst to best.
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14. MISS JULIE (2014)
Image Credit: Maipo Film/Apocalypse Film Company/Senorita/Subotica/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Liv Ullman. Starring Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton.
Chastain teamed with famed actress turned director Liv Ullman who also wrote the screenplay adaption of August Strindberg’s famed play. Chastain stars as an aristocratic young woman who seduces her father’s valet only to find the valet has very harsh feelings towards her and is violent and manipulative towards her wealth.
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13. CRIMSON PEAK (2015)
Image Credit: Legendary/Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Guillermo del Toro. Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Matthew Robbins. Starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam.
Director Guillermo del Toro displayed his usually flare for fantasy storytelling but with only mixed results in this film about a house that is possessed with its own living spirit. Mia Wasikowska stars as an aspiring writer who falls in love with a man of British royalty and finds macabre goings on at his house. The film evokes such classic Gothic tales as Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” and also “Wuthering Heights.” Chastain is cast in the villainous role of the lead male’s sister who schemes to dispose of his new love.
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12. CORIOLANUS (2011)
Image Credit: Icon Entertainment International/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ralph Fiennes, Writer: John Logan. Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave.
Ralph Fiennes who frequently appears in the works of Shakespeare on the British stage directed and stars in this adaptation of one of the Bard’s lesser known plays. Fiennes stars in the title role as a warrior who seeks vengeance on the city of Rome from which he has been banished. Chastain plays his wife and was praised for her quiet work in some of the dialogue-less scenes Fiennes created for the film to flesh out her character.
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11. A MOST VIOLENT YEAR (2014)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: J.C. Chandor. Starring Oscar Isaac, David Oyelowo, Jerry Adler.
The title of this film refers to 1981 which was considered the most crime ridden year in New York City’s history. Chastain plays the tough wife of a man whose heating oil trucks have been hijacked and wants him to fight back. Chastain received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress but once again was left out of the Oscar race. It was theorized that this happened in part due to the fact that Chastain was contracted to only awards campaign for “Interstellar” up to a certain time in the awards race. By the time that deadline passed she was at a disadvantage campaigning for this smaller film.
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10. THE MARTIAN (2015)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ridley Scott. Writer: Drew Goddard. Starring Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels.
Ridley Scott’s film about an astronaut stranded alone on the surface of Mars received 7 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Actor (for Matt Damon) and Adapted Screenplay. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Comedy and Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for Damon in a much debated category placement as a comedy. Chastain plays the commander of the mission who leaves Damon alone on the planet since she believes he has been killed.
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9. INTERSTELLAR (2014)
Image Credit: Paramount/Warner Brothers/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Christopher Nolan. Writer: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Ellen Burstyn.
Matthew McConaughey stars as another astronaut with Chastain playing his adult daughter this time. McConaughey’s character accepts a mission to travel through a worm hole in space in a quest to save humanity from a dying earth. In order to do so he has to leave behind his daughter. Chastain plays the adult version of the character who accomplishes a great deal despite her grief at her father’s departure.
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8. TAKE SHELTER (2011)
Image Credit: Grove Hill Prods/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Jeff Nichols. Starring Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham.
The year 2011 was a breakthrough one for Chastain since she had four key supporting roles in major films and won a few critic’s group awards for her body of work for the year. In this film Chastain plays the wife of a man who begins to have apocalyptic visions. It is a mystery though if the man is actually having truthful visions of things to come or is actually just losing his mind.
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7. THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)
Image Credit: Cottonwood/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Terrence Malick. Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Fiona Shaw.
Terrence Malick’s films can often by divisive and this one was probably the one of his that most divided audiences. The beginning of the film depicts the actual beginning of the earth in an elaborate sequence that many felt tedious. The film eventually settles on a story of a young couple (Brad Pitt and Chastain) raising there young children. One of those children will grow up to be Sean Penn who harbors resentment towards his father over his childhood.
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6. THE GOOD NURSE (2022)
Image Credit: Jojo Whilden/Netflix For the follow-up to her Oscar-winning turn in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Chastain teamed up with fellow Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne in this true crime thriller. She plays Amy Loughren, a single mother and nurse suffering from cardiomyopathy. When Charles Cullen (Redmayne) is hired to work alongside her in the intensive care unit, the two quickly form a tight bond, but mysterious patient deaths lead her to believe her friend and co-worker could be up to something sinister.
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5. MISS SLOANE (2016)
Image Credit: Europacorp/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: John Madden. Writer: Jonathan Perera. Starring Mark Strong.
“Miss Sloane” seemed designed to gain Oscar attention but the film may have tried too hard at that and it ultimately failed to get the Best Actress Oscar nomination Chastain seemed destined for. In the film Chastain plays a powerful Washington D.C. lobbyist who takes on the powerful gun lobby placing herself in the center of great controversy.
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4. MOLLY’S GAME (2017)
Image Credit: Michael Gibson/Stx Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Aaron Sorkin. Starring Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera.
Once again Chastain seemed to have found certain Best Actress material with “Molly’s Game” but ultimately despite a Golden Globe nomination failed to make the Oscar cut. This film was the feature film directing debut of Aaron Sorkin. It tells the true story of a skier who gets involved in setting up high stakes illegal poker games for which she attracts the unwanted attention of the FBI.
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3. THE HELP (2011)
Image Credit: Dreamworks Pictures/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Tate Taylor. Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer.
Chastain earned her first Oscar nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) for this highly acclaimed film about how affluent women of the south treated their African-American housekeepers prior to the civil rights movement. Chastain is one of the women who treats her help well which is not always the case in the other households. In addition to Chastain the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis) and another Supporting Actress nomination for (Octavia Spencer.) Spencer would go on to win the award.
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2. THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (2021)
Image Credit: Searchlight Pictures Even viewers lukewarm on “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” have praised Chastain for her performance as Tammy Faye Bakker. The actress spent hours in the makeup chair to transform into the televangelist, and she plays Bakker from as young as 18 to well into her 60s — mixing broad comedy and musical-theater bona fides with heavy drama and heartbreak.
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1. ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Kathryn Bigelow. Writer: Mark Boal. Starring Chris Pratt, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle.
Chastain received her second Oscar nomination and first as Best Actress for this riveting tale of a CIA analyst tracking Osama bin Laden, the ring leader of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The film received a total of five Oscar nominations including Best Picture but strangely its director Kathryn Bigelow was left out. Chastain is quite riveting as a brainy young agent who was recruited right out of high school and manages to figure out where she believes bin Laden was hiding. She then must convince authorities that she knows what she is talking about and that they should take military action.
