Jessica Chastain
ON PLAYING A TRUECRIME HEROINE, THE THRILL OF WINNING AN OSCAR FOR THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE AND WHY HER ROLE IN THE HELP WASN’T HER FAVORITE
You don’t need fingerprints and a DNA match to know we’re in the midst of a true-crime wave. Enter Jessica Chastain, 45, who plays a real-life heroine in a gripping Netflix thriller, The Good Nurse (streaming Oct. 26).
Based on actual events (and a 2013 book), it’s the shocking story of how New Jersey nurse Amy Loughren, a single mom with a heart condition, risked her career—and her life—to uncover the truth behind a mysterious series of patient deaths at her hospital. Turns out that her mild-mannered colleague Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) was responsible, and his sinister work reached farther back than anyone fathomed.
“Amy used love and compassion to stop the cycle of violence,” Chastain tells Parade. “She doesn’t bully him; she doesn’t make him feel smaller. She just wants to know why. With everything in true crime so sensationalized now, that approach is the story I wanted to tell.”
Since 2011, Chastain has been at the heart of many of film’s best stories, including The Tree of Life, The Help, Zero Dark Thirty, Interstellar, A Most Violent Year, The Martian, Molly’s Game, It Chapter Two, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and last year’s award-winning limited series Scenes From a Marriage, with Oscar Isaac.
Her success is even more remarkable given where she started. A native of