Jessica Chastain

Jessica Michelle Chastain is an American actress. She began her Hollywood career in guest-roles on a few television series, before making her feature film debut in the drama Jolene (2008), and gained wide recognition in 2011 for starring roles in half a dozen films, including the dramas Take Shelter and The Tree of Life. Her performance as an aspiring socialite in The Help earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

Chastain garnered critical acclaim in 2012 for her performance in Zero Dark Thirty, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Drama and the Critics Choice Movie Award for Best Actress and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. Chastain made her Broadway debut in a revival of The Heiress in the same year.

Chastain is the founder of the production company Freckle Films, which was created to promote diversity in film. She is vocal about mental health issues, as well as gender and racial equality. Chastain is vocal in her support for equal pay in the workplace and has rejected offers of work that she thought were unfair. On social media, Chastain aims to "amplify the voices" of victims of sexual harassment in the industry. In 2018, she collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination. In the same year, she appeared alongside several actresses in This Changes Everything, a documentary about the poor representation of women in Hollywood films. In 2012, Time featured her as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World."