Ever since Jessica Chastain hit the big time back in 2011, appearing in films such as The Tree Of Life, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, and The Help, she has been a force to be reckon with when it comes to Oscar. That year she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in The Help, while the next year she followed that up with her first ever Best Actress nomination for her starring performance in the Best Picture-nominated Zero Dark Thirty. While she spent a year on the Oscar sidelines in 2013, she is back in full force this year with potential Oscar-worthy roles in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year. While the former film is definitely the movie with higher name recognition, Christopher Nolan's space epic hasn't quite taken off as spectacularly as many were expecting it to and currently all the buzz for Chastain has gathered around her role in Chandor's movie. The film is said to chronicle the unethical deeds of an immigrant on his way to the top of New York City society during the city's most violent year on record: 1981. Chastain's role in the film is described as that of a "Lady Macbeth" figure, which is good news for Chastain because the tomes of Oscar history are filled with nominees who played Lady Macbeth types. There are two main obstacles though to Chastain's chances at a third Oscar nomination. First, the movie itself, which is a smaller art house film that may have trouble getting attention from Academy voters, although the film's win as Best Picture of the year from the National Board of Review this past week was definitely a big boost to her chances. Chastain also has the (un)fortunate problem of having two viable roles for nomination. If she splits her own votes between A Most Violent Year and Interstellar, she may find herself not getting nominated for either.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
