The 2013 Oscar Nominees Luncheon took place Feb. 4 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Nominees gathered to have lunch, pose for photos, receive their official Academy Award nomination certificate, and do interviews. (The 85th annual Oscar ceremony takes place Feb. 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. ABC has the live U.S. telecast of the show at 8:30 p.m. EST/5:30 p.m. PST.) Here is what this Oscar nominee said when doing a brief press conference interview in the Oscar Nominees Luncheon’s press room.
JESSICA CHASTAIN
Nominated for:
Best Actress
What are you looking for in the dress that you’ll be wearing at the Oscars?
Most little girls dream about their wedding dresses but I always dreamed about my Oscar dresses. Maybe because I like color. Probably I’m going to go for something that is perhaps colorful. But you never know. At the last minute you could change your mind. I love fashion that celebrates a woman’s body, that maybe is a throwback to the glamour of old Hollywood — that silhouette but somehow making it modern.
What will your Oscars day be like before you go to the ceremony?
Just to have the morning off will be like Zen calm for me. I had three shows this weekend. I’m still doing the Broadway play [“The Heiress”]. I had two shows on Saturday and one on Sunday, and I went straight to the airport. I do feel like I don’t know which world I’m in right now.
So probably the morning of the Oscars, I’m going to be surrounded by my friends and my family and probably have a nice breakfast and play some calming music with candles — just something really relaxing and celebratory.
For me, this strange thing that happens this time of year, it starts to feel like it’s a race. Acting is very different from playing tennis. You don’t put two people in a room and we match it out.
For me, I feel like I’ve already won. So I never want to lose sight of what I feel right now, being in this business and being nominated. I know everybody says that, but really, you win already. And that’s going to be very important for me, my family and my friends to focus on.
What advice to you to any actors who want to be where you are?
Oh gosh. Whenever an actor comes up to me for advice, I always say to do something every single day that reminds yourself that you’re an actor, even when no one’s paying you to be an actor and you don’t have a job.
When I was trying to find out how to find my place in this industry, I continued like I was still in school. So I would make sure I would have a movement class every day. I found a donation-based yoga studio.
And I would go to the library and start working on a play and adapting “Hamlet.” I thought I was going to make a movie of “Hamlet” someday. So I think if you do something like that that’s for yourself every day, you continue to grow, and you don’t feel like someone else is in charge of your growth as an actor.
What advice do you have for women starting out in the military?
I don’t know if I have much advice to women who are giving so much of their lives to be civil servants and protect our country. I admire people who do that greatly. My advice to any woman in a field that has been in the past dominated by men by numbers and by seniority would be to look at the great examples like [“Zero Dark Thirty” director] Kathryn Bigelow and Maya, the woman I play in this film.
And instead complaining about the numbers not matching, which of course is an important issue, but I found that if you do really good work, it will rise to the top. And Kathryn Bigelow never talks about the glass ceiling in Hollywood for female directors. She shows up on set. She’s an expert at her work, and at the end of the day, that’s what you know her for.
You don’t think, “She’s a brilliant filmmaker — and she's a woman, can you believe it?” I just think, “She’s a brilliant filmmaker.” And that’s the way I feel way about Maya. And what I would say to the women in the military is “Thank you.”
For more info: Academy Awards website
RELATED LINKS ON EXAMINER.COM:
Comments