Jessica Chastain is a winner no matter what. The 44-year-old, who is nominated in the Best Actress category for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, arrived at the Oscars in a breathtaking Gucci dress on Sunday, March 27. The ombrée colored dress was all Mermaid vibes, starting with a bronze, sleeveless bodice before fading into a jaw dropping lavender colored skirt that included a dramatic ruffle detail at the bottom.
Jessica’s signature red hair was looking glossier than ever, styled into a chic, wavy ponytail by stylist Renato Campora. He kept her hair looking ultra shiny and hydrated thanks to the Zucca Color Therapy Mask by haircare brand Madison Reed.
Chastain plays Tammy Faye Bakker in the critically acclaimed film, which is based on a true story. In the story, Bakker plays a televangelists who uses a show to entertain but also manipulate viewers. Bakker and her husband Jim (Andrew Garfield) become wealthy and famous — but ultimately get themselves into legal hot water. The Bakkers were indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public.
Jessica has tough competition in the Best Actress category this year against a slew of talented nominees that include Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter, Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers, Nicole Kidman in Being The Ricardos, and Kristen Stewart in Spencer. Olivia has won in the same category before, as has Nicole (in addition to being nominated in the Best Supporting Category). Cruz has also won before in the Best Supporting Actress. This year marks the first nominations, and the third for Jessica.
The role of playing Tammy was nearly 10 years in the making for Jessica, who got the idea for the film from a documentary. “I was on the press tour for Zero Dark Thirty, and I was jet-lagged in a hotel room somewhere. The documentary on Tammy Faye came on television, and I was blown away by her and the true story of who she was,” she said to W in Jan. 2022. “I called my manager and my agent, and I said, ‘How do I figure out how to make a movie?’ I got the rights in 2012, and we were on set shooting seven years later,” she added.
“I just wanted to tell her story so bad. And in fact, the documentary filmmakers were so sweet,” she went on. “They told me recently that on our first meeting, right before they gave me the rights to the story, they were like, ‘I don’t think Jessica could do this.’ They’d been so supportive and given me hundreds of hours of unused footage from the doc. They absolutely took a leap of faith by allowing me to tell her story.”