The actress is seeking her third Oscar nomination for ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, in which she plays a famous US televangelist who fell from grace
Jessica Chastain (Sacramento, USA, 1977) gets into ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ in the skin of the most famous televangelist in the United States, a role that could bring her her third Oscar nomination. Chastain saw a documentary about her twenty years ago, when she was an unknown actress, and bought the rights to her, producing and starring in her film adaptation two decades later.
Why have you waited so long to make this film?
I have stopped being afraid of failure. If I have fought against anything in my career, it has been against the label of being the actress of the moment. I don’t want to be replaced from one year to the next by a younger colleague. I’m going step by step, that’s why I’ve waited for the moment to make this film.
-What has changed?
– The idea of gender has been erased, it flows in another way. Now, in the cinema, a woman can be soft and at the same time an ambitious leader. You can be a man and show finesse, but also be brave, strong. In my career I have played different types of women, all of them powerful, because all women are. However, Tammy lives an internal struggle against herself and hides under her thick layer of makeup. The fear of making a fool of myself with this role stopped me for years. I think the audience has changed and is now able to accept characters like Tammy Faye.
“Tammy Faye escaped the beating of her husband, but not the public embarrassment.
-I did not have the opportunity to meet her, she died in 2007. As a woman she was able to see beyond any type of offense, beyond her personal pain. I admire her because she could see the pain in others and assimilate her own. That moved me when I played her.
–Respect the Christian values of the character
-Undoubtedly. Not only do I respect them, but I admire their courage in supporting a gay minister in the 1980s against the views of evangelicals who criticized homosexuals in the AIDS years. He was very punk of his part. She was able to remind the world that Christianity speaks of having the strength to love one another and to forgive. Tammy was a hardworking woman who was unfairly judged for her husband’s mistakes. Solita created three television networks. She hosted a bunch of shows every day, wrote books, recorded songs, and worked constantly. She was not greedy, but a woman capable of consolidating an empire.
Jessica Chastain in ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’.
–Much of your success as an actress lies in the very different characters you play.
I want to believe that feelings are contagious. I like the challenge, to the point of considering myself a masochist. I don’t know what it is that attracts me to a character, but I feel the need to take full risk when I play. When I act I am so foolish that I think I can do anything. There are many actors out of work and I, who am privileged, have to give my best.
-Until completely change their physical appearance.
–In our industry, we celebrate men who take risks with their characters, while women are valued for their appearance. With this role I have transformed myself to the point of exaggeration. I was so scared that it took me 20 years to be ready. Tammy Faye was known more for her heavy makeup than the fact that her husband stole millions of dollars from her parishioners. I was terrified that people would make fun of me, but here I am talking about a woman who has stolen my heart.
Makeup, sermons and an amusement park
O. BELATEGUI
Tammy Faye is one of those characters that could only exist in America. In the 70s and 80s, she reigned among the evangelical televangelists to the point of building an empire that included television channels and an amusement park for her faithful. Unlike their rivals, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye sold optimism with pastel colors and upbeat music. Obsessed with her appearance, always made up like a door, she defended homosexuals in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Everything fell apart when her husband’s accounting practices and her infidelities came to light. In short, an excessive and ideal role for Chastain’s third Oscar nomination to be the charm.