Jessica Chastain went shopping for her own costumes at Target for her new movie, ‘Memory’
That’s Targét to you, Jessica Chastain!
The Oscar-winning actor recently revealed that she shopped at Target to get into character as a normal person for her new movie, “Memory” — but was told she still looked “too chic.” The official description for the film, directed by Michel Franco, bills Chastain’s character as a “social worker who leads a simple and structured life.”
“I was in Nashville at the time, and I went to Target,” Chastain told IndieWire of her experience preparing for production.
“We were moving quickly. I think I spent like $130 and I brought it back, and we did a fitting. Michel told me that our cinematographer Yves [Cape] goes, ‘She still looks too chic!’ There was a lot of ‘let’s try and just scrub Jessica of any kind of movie star feeling that we can,’ which also I appreciated.”
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Not only did Chastain shop at Target, she also “appreciated” the opportunity to style her own hair for the entirety of the shoot.
“It was fun,” she said.
Franco gushed over how down-to-earth Chastain was while working on the Mexican American drama — which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival after securing an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA to move forward during the Hollywood actors’ strike.
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After Chastain won her first Oscar last year for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” people warned Franco that his lead likely would drop out of “Memory” — an independent, character-driven feature about former high school classmates who reconnect at a reunion and open a window to their pasts.
“Because I have been doing bigger things sometimes and have gotten a lot of attention as of late, [there’s been the idea] that I would not be interested in being on a set without a trailer,” Chastain told IndieWire.
“Or that she is going to show up and be a nightmare and be a diva,” Franco added. “I told them, you don’t know half of it. She’s the opposite. She’s going to show up satisfied, happy, and be productive. People are so afraid of actors. I don’t know why. The worst way to approach an actor or any person is with fear, and if you are pointing in the wrong direction, then, yes, all your nightmares will come true.”
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In addition to purchasing her own costumes and doing her own hair, Chastain wore no makeup and had no trailer on the set of “Memory,” according to IndieWire. Despite what some seem to believe, Chastain said she isn’t in the movie business “to be pampered.”
“If I want to be pampered, I’ll go to a spa,” she said. “I’m doing a film to work and to be creative, and I don’t need to sit by myself in a trailer.”
In August, Chastain opened up to the Los Angeles Times about how she used to live off of residuals from her work on TV pilots or guest spots on “Law & Order.” Not that long ago, the A-lister said, she was driving around Los Angeles from audition to audition in her beat-up Honda Civic, stopping at gas stations to change her clothes and quickly memorize her lines.
The producer-actor took her time getting the film made, hesitant to dive in fully and maybe get ridiculed for it. “I felt like I was putting myself in front of a firing squad.”
Chastain has been a vocal supporter of the actors’ strike and wore a shirt representing SAG-AFTRA at the Venice Film Festival.
“I just know the actors can’t give in,” Chastain told The Times.
“They just can’t. If they do — especially what I’ve read about background artists — then they’re really writing themselves out of the industry in the future.”
After this story was initially published with the headline “Jessica Chastain shopped at Target to get into character as a normal person ‘who leads a simple life’ for her new movie,” Chastain wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that she shops at Target “all the time” and that the “interesting part” of her IndieWire interview was that she “got to get into character” by shopping for her own costumes.
“That’s the not normal part,” she added. (The headline has since been changed.)
In the replies, “The King Tide” and “Titanic” actor Frances Fisher praised Chastain for always being “a consummate actress” with “exemplary” ethics.
“We’ve known each other since we worked on #Jolene, and the work you put into your character was beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” Fisher said.
Times columnist Glenn Whipp contributed to this report.
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