Jessica Chastain Wants More Roles, for Her and for All Her Fellow Actresses

Jessica Chastain sat down with Glamour recently, and told them some things that are right up our alley!

I love Meryl Streep. She’s such an incredible actress. But I feel like she’s the only one in her age group who gets those parts. I’d like to see Jessica Lange in a movie again, you know? Or Susan Sarandon. Why isn’t Viola Davis a lead in a film? She’s one of the greatest actresses alive. And where are the Asian actors and actresses? I’m not saying we don’t want movies about men. I’m just saying, come on, all the men I know love women! So let’s also have some stories about these women. Let’s write something for them, guys – and let’s make room for women writers, too.

But of course a diversity of actresses demands a diversity of characters, and Chastain didn’t refrain from pointing that out:

There are a very limited number of parts [that depict strong women]. And there are some women that I’ve played and I didn’t give them too many flaws. Tree of Life. I loved that woman. Or The Help: Loved her, loved her, loved her, for all her openheartedness and compassion. But when I play a female lead, like the role in Zero Dark Thirty, even if she’s strong, I try to give her as many flaws as I can. I think to play a female hero without faults is actually doing a disservice to women. I think it’s more interesting to see women on-screen with flaws. Then it’s not this unreasonable expectation that society then would put on you: “Well, a strong woman can’t be like this….” I don’t think it’s possible for anyone, male or female, to have it all. I’m just gonna say it: We can have as much as we’re capable of doing, but no one is capable of doing everything.

(Glamour via Digital Spy, top pic copyright Featureflash via Shutterstock.com)

Previously in Jessica Chastain

• Jessica Chastain Tells Vanity Fair Everyone Is Ready For A Female Superhero Film
• Jessica Chastain Was Close To A Superhero Movie Role But Has Particular Demands For When It Actually Happens
• Casting Roundup: Once Upon a Time, Arrow, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Pick Up New Actors

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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