A veteran stage actress, Chastain's big-screen career has been largely in a holding pattern, with only two of the 11 films she's made in the past four years released so far.
That changes Friday as the Cannes Film Festival winner – Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," in which she co-stars with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn – opens theatrically after a long delay while the director continued to tinker with the film.
Some of her other films, among them the Holocaust-revenge thriller "The Debt" with Helen Mirren, were delayed because of distribution troubles, so they now are coming to theaters around the same time as dramas she shot more recently, including this summer's best-seller adaptation "The Help."
Three other Chastain films – "Coriolanus" with Ralph Fiennes, "Take Shelter" with Michael Shannon and "The Fields," reuniting her with "The Debt" co-star Sam Worthington – also are tentatively scheduled to come out by the end of the year.
"I'm just nervous that I'm going to be the newcomer that everyone's sick of, and they don't even know my name. People are like, 'Why is this girl in every single movie I'm seeing this fall?'" Chastain said in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, where "The Tree of Life" premiered last week, taking the coveted Palme d'Or top prize. "Take Shelter" also screened at Cannes.
Chastain, who is about 30 but will not disclose her exact age, grew up in northern California and dreamed of becoming an actress from about the age of 5, despite her family's expectations that she would grow out of it.
Her father is a fireman, her mother a "stay-at-home mom slash vegan chef," Chastain said, and while they never discouraged her about the prospects of acting, they did not encourage her, either.
Yet Chastain said she continually pestered her mother to take her to Los Angeles so she could audition for commercials. They finally came around after she got into the drama department at Juilliard and earned a scholarship that paid for most of her training.
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