Jessica Chastain's torturous assignment

Jessica Chastain's performance as a spy in Zero Dark Thirty has put her in line for an Oscar. Yet, she says, ‘it was the worst experience of my life’.

Of all the internet chatter on Zero Dark Thirty that appeared in the two years leading up to its release, only one piece of misinformation riled the film’s star, Jessica Chastain. “They were saying that Joel Edgerton was the lead in the movie and that I was his wife,” says the 31-year-old actress, whose performance has earned her both Oscar and Bafta nominations. “Because of course, Jessica must be the wife… Every time I read that, I wanted to punch somebody.”
Once Kathryn Bigelow’s film – the story of the pursuit and capture of Osama bin Laden – has been widely viewed, nobody will ever assume that Chastain is playing the wife again. Nominated for five Oscars – and already the winner of a Golden Globe for Chastain – it’s a landmark film for everyone involved, from Hurt Locker director, Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal, to Chastain, Edgerton, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong and the rest of the cast. It’s also a deeply unpleasant film to watch, and, one assumes, a still more unpleasant one to have starred in.
They were filming the torture scenes that make up the first third of the film in a working Jordanian prison, she explains. “That was scary to begin with, because the prisoners weren’t used to seeing women – let alone women with red hair. But really it was because I wanted to get it right. It was because I felt so much responsibility towards this woman.”

The woman in question was the real-life young CIA agent – name unknown – who spent five years tracking down Bin Laden and whose single-minded determination has been credited by Navy Seals as being a key factor in the mission’s success. “Of course, I couldn’t meet the real ‘Maya’ because she’s still active, but I sometimes feel like she may have been in a room with me,” says Chastain, smiling, embarrassed by her own superstition. “Powerful women on screen are generally written up in two ways: manly and tough or sexy female spy who uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants. Maya is neither: she’s a woman who uses her brain – and that’s what Kathryn [Bigelow] is too. She happens to be a woman, but she’s a great director.”
It’s by thwarting our expectations at every turn that Bigelow manages to keep a nearly three-hour long film – to which we all know the ending – compelling. When Maya witnesses waterboarding for the first time, we feel sure the director is about to make an anti-torture point; instead, Bigelow focuses on how Obama’s subsequent torture ban frustrated many in the field – prompting the American critic David Edelstein to write that the film “borders on the politically and morally reprehensible,” because it “makes a case for the efficacy of torture”.
“When Mark [Boal] was doing his research and talking to people in the field,” says Chastain, “many said to him: ‘we don’t know what to do now – how do we get the information?’”
Similarly, once Jennifer Ehle – as a veteran CIA co-analyst – appears, “everyone feels sure that we’re either going to fight over a man or a job,” says Chastain. “Because that’s what women do, isn’t it?” Instead the two become friends. And again, just as your heart sinks at the prospect of Chastain’s “inevitable” affair with Clarke, her co-worker, Bigelow swerves off, leaving Maya emotionally barren: a hardened young woman who, once the mission is over, is left feeling destitute.

Times must have changed. Over the past few years Chastain has played a succession of beautiful, complicated leading women, from the silent and wounded mother of Brad Pitt’s children in Terrence Malik’s Tree of Life, and Foote in The Help – unable either to bear children or integrate herself into small-town Mississippi society – to a traumatised former Mossad agent in The Debt.
“I see a lot of contradictions in myself,” she admits. “I see a lot of vulnerability but I also know that I can get through things. I’m very competitive with myself, and very critical – even in my personal life. Actually friends have said that I’m harder on myself than anyone else.”
Years of ballet as a young girl point to that underlying toughness. It’s also easy to forget that Chastain’s rise wasn’t as quick and struggle-free as it seems. She may have appeared in six films last year, but there was a period of four years, from 2003 when she graduated from Juilliard and moved to Los Angeles, when she “just couldn’t get an audition”. “I remember going in to ‘pre-screen’ for an audition for a guest spot on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and thinking it was just so humiliating,” she laughs.

Despite, and perhaps in part because of her distinctive looks, Chastain triumphed. Over the past three years she has gone from being a complete unknown to being in danger of saturating the market: in April last year, Time magazine named her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. “Crazytown!” she laughs. “But look: the thing I love most about acting is that it makes me feel connected to society. In The Debt and The Help I felt connected to a group of women that are now gone. It’s like there’s this invisible intimacy there. When I act, I become a servant to it,” she explains, earnest and unsmiling now. “I offer up my mind, my body and my soul.”
That generosity of spirit is likely to be tested over the next few years. The “body” part may be more of a perk than a chore: “I’m not going to lie – being given free clothes is fantastic,” she says.
“Last year I got really emotional with [royal wedding dress designer] Sarah Burton at my Oscar dress fitting. I never used to imagine my wedding dress as a little girl, but I’d always imagined my Oscar dress.”
But the reality of relinquishing one’s “soul” to the demands of celebrity is only just dawning on her. “Last night I was followed home from a screening of the film by paparazzi. They were posing as fans outside my house and now the pictures are online. Those things are starting to happen. It’s pretty freaky.”
Chastain never had a fear of fame, “But it was never about fame for me. If it had been, I would have taken the faster route: reality TV, an actor boyfriend or walked down tons of red carpets before a movie of mine even came out.”

What did she take away from playing Maya? “That it’s OK to say no and not have people like you,” she nods. “I don’t like confrontation – it makes me very uncomfortable – but Maya didn’t care. She wouldn’t have achieved what she did if she had.” She knows exactly what she’d say to the real-life “Maya” in the unlikely event that the two should one day meet. “I’d want to ask her if I did it OK,” she says softly. “And tell her that this is the most important role I’ve ever played.”
Once The Heiress – the Broadway adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square – finishes its run next month, Chastain wants to take a break. “For so long I’ve wanted to shout about Zero Dark Thirty from the rooftops, but now I want to not talk for a while. I’d like to go somewhere and be silent. Go to Italy and take cooking classes or France and learn French. Either way – for a little while – I’d like to disappear.”