jessica chastain tree of life
A veteran stage actress, Chastain's big-screen career has been largely in a holding pattern, with only two of the 11 films she's made in the past four years released so far.
That changes Friday as the Cannes Film Festival winner – Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," in which she co-stars with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn – opens theatrically after a long delay while the director continued to tinker with the film.
Some of her other films, among them the Holocaust-revenge thriller "The Debt" with Helen Mirren, were delayed because of distribution troubles, so they now are coming to theaters around the same time as dramas she shot more recently, including this summer's best-seller adaptation "The Help."
Three other Chastain films – "Coriolanus" with Ralph Fiennes, "Take Shelter" with Michael Shannon and "The Fields," reuniting her with "The Debt" co-star Sam Worthington – also are tentatively scheduled to come out by the end of the year.