'Tom Cruise changed my career'
The 40-year-old flame-haired actor has revealed that she owes her role in the political action-thriller to Cruise, who used his considerable influence to help Chastain star in the hit movie about the real-life search for Osama bin Laden, rather than his own film Oblivion.
6 April 2017 4:14 PM GMT
Hollywood star Jessica Chastain has thanked Tom Cruise for changing the course of her career, after he helped her to secure a role in Zero Dark Thirty.
The 40-year-old flame-haired actor has revealed that she owes her role in the political action-thriller to Cruise, who used his considerable influence to help Chastain star in the hit movie about the real-life search for Osama bin Laden, rather than his own film Oblivion, reported Contactmusic.
"I got cold-called by (director) Kathryn Bigelow. I was in Toronto, and I had heard from (producer) Megan Ellison with whom I had done a film, Lawless," she says.
"And she said, 'By the way, do you know Kathryn Bigelow is trying to get a hold of you? She wants to meet you on something.' And I was like, 'What? Please give her my number'.
"I was signed to do another movie (at the time). I was contractually obligated to do something else that I was really wanting to do, and I was excited to do [the 2013 thriller Oblivion, starring Cruise]. But when this came my way, I realised I had to do this."
And the person who made it possible for me to do this movie is Tom Cruise. Someone contacted him from my agency and said, 'Listen, she wants to work with you. And she would love to, but there is this other film, and it's so important.' And he said, 'OK, we're going to let you out of your contract.' "
The two have never worked together, said Chastain, but "I really hope to find something in the future to do with him because I'm very grateful." She added, "I've seen him afterwards. And I was like, 'Dude, you're awesome!' "
So is the character Chastain plays in her new movie, The Zookeeper's Wife, based on the Diane Ackerman book about the real-life Antonina Zabinski, who saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis by hiding them in her Warsaw zoo. The movie released on March 31.
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